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You've been Trumped!

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sat 09 Jun , 2018 6:09 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ite-agency
Quote:
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos moved to reinstate a for-profit college accredditor despite her own staff's concerns that the organization did not meet federal education standards.

...The March 2018 report by agency personnel concluded that ACICS should not be reinstated, Politico reported. But DeVos moved to allow the organization to resume operations anyway in April, after a judge ruled the Obama administration illegally ignored relevant evidence to the case.

Career officials at the agency argued that ACICS failed to meet 57 of the 93 criteria required by the Education Department, and the firm also faces questions over why it certified schools such as ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges amid their collapse under fraud investigations, according to Politico.

An Education Department spokeswoman told the news outlet that despite the judge's refusal to order the agency to reinstate the organization, the department was still unable to enforce a ruling found to be illegal....[however] According to Politico, the judge specifically rejected the request from ACICS to reinstate the firm, and merely sent it back to DeVos for more consideration.

Trump rants at our allies and trading partners, including some really weird stuff (he talks about illegal drugs in the context of trade deficits) :
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... g-7-summit
Quote:
As he prepared to depart early from the G-7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, to head to Singapore ahead of his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump delivered an ultimatum to foreign leaders, demanding that their countries reduce trade barriers for the U.S. or risk losing market access to the world's largest economy.

"They have no choice. I'll be honest with you, they have no choice," Trump told reporters at a news conference, adding that companies and jobs had left the U.S. to escape trade barriers abroad. "We're going to fix that situation. And if it's not fixed, then we're not going to deal with these countries."

...He also warned the countries against trying to hit back against the steel and aluminum tariffs his administration recently announced, adding that he would continue to pursue such trade measures until other countries relented and agreed to "fair" trade deals with the U.S.

..."They can't believe they got away with it. Canada can't believe it got away with it," he continued. "Mexico — we have a $100 billion trade deficit with Mexico, and that doesn't include all the drugs that are pouring in."

http://thehill.com/latino/391483-hondur ... m-wife-and
Quote:
A Honduran immigrant reportedly took his own life while in custody after his wife and child were separated from him at the U.S.-Mexico border. Marco Antonio Muñoz, 29, killed himself in the cell of a Texas jail last month, according to the Starr County sheriff’s department incident report obtained by The Washington Post.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not publicly disclose the death, according to The Post. The Hill has reached out to DHS for comment. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Starr County authorities did not respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment.

...Border Patrol agents familiar with the situation told the Post that Muñoz, his wife and three-year-old son were taken into custody after crossing the border into the U.S. near Granjeno, Texas. One agent speaking to the paper on the condition of anonymity said that after the family said they wanted to apply for asylum, they were told they would be separated. “The guy lost his s--t,” the agent told the Post. “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sun 10 Jun , 2018 9:16 pm
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Duplicate post

Last edited by aninkling on Sun 10 Jun , 2018 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Sun 10 Jun , 2018 9:21 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... here-their
Quote:
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on Saturday that asylum-seeking women being held at a detention center near Seattle "have no idea" where their children were after they were separated by immigration officials at the U.S.–Mexico border.

... The women cried every time we talked about their children. They do not know where they are. They literally did not have the chance to say goodbye to their kids.

It was absolutely heartbreaking across the board and that is why we must inmediately DEFUND these @DHSgov practices. pic.twitter.com/Gt4wEux4YY
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) June 9, 2018


...Jayapal went on to describe poor conditions in which the women are being held. “They literally refer to the holding places with names such as the icebox because they are so cold with no blankets, no mattresses, nothing to sleep on, nothing to cover themselves in. If they came across the river they were put into the icebox in the same clothes that they came out of the river in,” Jayapal said of the federal facility.
Quote:
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said it was disturbing that Trump seemed “clueless about this policy.”
“President Trump is responsible for this and if he is as troubled by it as he claims to be, then stop doing it. You are the president, you have the power to change this policy in an instant,” Smith said.

The Trump administration separated nearly 1,800 families at the U.S.–Mexico border between October 2016 and February of this year, a senior government official told Reuters on Friday.


More ranting and raving from the Trump administration because our allies did not lie down meekly when Trump began imposing tariffs. Navarro is particularly charming:
http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk ... at-trudeau
Quote:
President Trump’s top economic advisers mounted scathing attacks against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during appearances on the Sunday talk show circuit, arguing he had undermined Trump's standing ahead of his talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Trudeau's comments at a press conference after the Group of Seven (G-7) summit amounted to a "betrayal," while Peter Navarro, a Trump trade official, declared there was a "special place in hell" for foreign leaders who double-cross Trump.

The stunning remarks widened a rift on trade policy between the United States and Canada, which has joined the European Union and Mexico in blasting Trump's decision to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

The latest condemnation of Trudeau followed Trump's decision to not sign a G-7 communique after a weekend meeting of seven major industrialized economies, a group of traditional U.S. allies.
Someone really should tell these people that Trump is doing a damn good job of undermining his own standing with the world. Unfortunately, he's dragging the rest of the US with him.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-t ... -1.4699550
Quote:
U.S. President Donald Trump says Canada will have to dismantle its supply-managed dairy system or else Americans will dramatically curtail its trading relationship — a shot across the bow at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has vocally defended the country's existing agricultural policies in the face of U.S. opposition.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... nto-the-g7
Quote:
Donald Trump lobs a grenade from afar into the G7

The risks of a trade war were already high. This will not help
Quote:
FOR a moment, the Group of Seven (G7) leaders attending their annual summit, in a mountain village in Quebec, looked like they had managed to paper over their differences with President Donald Trump and present a united front. They found just the right wording to secure American agreement on matters that never used to be in question, such as supporting democracy, abiding by international-trade rules and fighting terrorism. Even Mr Trump professed himself pleased, calling the summit wonderful and rating his relationships with other leaders as ten out of ten.

Yet barely ten minutes after the official communiqué was published, he changed his mind. He tweeted from somewhere over the Pacific, en route to his “mission of peace” in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s despotic ruler, that he had instructed his officials not to endorse the communiqué. He attacked Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister and host of the summit, for making “false statements” at his closing news conference, and renewed his threat to impose tariffs on automobiles supposedly “flooding the U.S. Market!”.
Quote:
On trade, at one point it seemed as though Mr Trump was in search of some sort of grand bargain, as he called for the end of all subsidies, tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. But this was more an indication of how poorly Mr Trump understands the global trading system than a serious summons to the negotiating table.
Quote:
It is perhaps more surprising that Mr Trump still faces people who think he can be persuaded by facts.....Mr Trump’s counterparts brought binders of figures to the session devoted to trade in an attempt to persuade him that his belief that the rest of the world was unfair to America was mistaken. Tellingly, the desk in front of Mr Trump was bare. He later told reporters the others had been smiling at him as if they could not believe they had got away with using America as a “piggy bank” for so long.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... fter-trump
Quote:
President Trump reportedly has a habit of ripping up pieces of paper, including letters and official documents, that are required by law to be preserved, in what was described as his personal “filing system.”

Former staffers handling records management for the White House told Politico that they were tasked with taping the paper scraps together to ensure that the administration did not violate legal requirements to preserve presidential records.

Solomon Lartey, who was terminated after nearly three decades of government service, told Politico that he and colleagues would use Scotch tape to put the pieces together “like a jigsaw puzzle.” “It was the craziest thing ever,” Lartey told the news outlet. “He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
Original story from Politico:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... tem-635164
Politico originally contacted them to investigate their unusual firings. They described Trump destroying government records in the course of the interview.
Quote:
Lartey, 54, and Young, 48, were career government officials who worked together in records management until this spring, when both were abruptly terminated from their jobs.

...Lartey said he was fired at the end of the work day on March 23, with no warning. His top-secret security clearance was revoked, he said. Later, five boxes of his personal belongings were mailed to his home. “I was stunned,” he said. “I asked them, ‘Why can’t you all tell me something?’ I had gotten comfortable. I was going to retire. I would never have thought I would have gotten fired.” He signed a pre-written resignation letter that stated he was leaving to pursue other opportunities. But he is still unemployed.

Young, who was terminated April 19, said he fought back and had his official status changed from “resigned” to “terminated.” “I was coerced to sign a resignation letter at that time,” he said. “Then they escorted me to the garage and took my parking placard.”

He described the firing as traumatic and frustratingly Kafkaesque. “The only excuse that I’ve ever gotten from them,” he said, “was that you serve at the pleasure of the president.”
Quote:
Irene Porada, the head of human resources who personally terminated both men, did not respond to an email requesting comment. A White House spokesman also did not respond to a request for comment about the terminations.



Freudian slip? Trump was also portrayed as a king on the recent Time magazine.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/39157 ... as-meeting
Quote:
Fox News host Abby Huntsman apologized on Sunday after she referred to an upcoming summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a meeting between "two dictators."

"There we have him. There is the president of the United States, Donald Trump, about to walk down those stairs, stepping foot in Singapore as we await this historic summit with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un," Huntsman said.

..."There we have him. There is the president of the United States, Donald Trump, about to walk down those stairs, stepping foot in Singapore as we await this historic summit with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un," Huntsman said. "This is history we are living, regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators. What we are seeing right now, this is history," she said.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 11 Jun , 2018 2:38 pm
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http://thehill.com/regulation/finance/3 ... own-agency
Ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB),
Quote:
Just this week, Mulvaney dismissed the members of three CFPB advisory boards, including a consumer-advocate panel he's legally required to meet with twice each year.
Quote:
Structural changes and political hires
Mulvaney has used his vast power and independence to sway the CFPB by pairing career bureau staffers hired for policy chops with highly paid political appointees. He’s also rearranged the bureau’s structure, making a broad array of powers subject to his appointees’ control.

Mulvaney's top aides have overseen efforts to slim down the bureau and make it more responsive to the financial services industry.
Quote:
Mulvaney has reversed the CFPB’s wide crackdown on short-term, high-interest loans.
Quote:
The CFPB has issued several formal requests for complaints on almost every aspect of its own regulatory and enforcement actions.

...The requests target the ways the CFPB crafts regulations, begins investigations, issues subpoenas and penalizes firms it believes have violated laws.
Quote:
Mulvaney requested $0 during his first fiscal quarter in charge of the bureau, saying he’d instead use the CFPB’s $177 million emergency reserve account with the Fed’s New York branch. The fiscal hawk former congressman is mulling ways to slash the CFPB’s expenses, including personnel changes or relocations.
There have also been reports of other agencies trying to force non-political appointees out by reassigning them to less desirable jobs or locations far from where they and their families live.
Given the report in Politico of people in the records office being forced out and given "voluntary" resignations to fill out, I wonder how widespread this is.



http://thehill.com/policy/technology/te ... lity-rules
Quote:
Monday marks the end of net neutrality rules in the U.S., following GOP members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voting to end the protections last year.

...The Senate voted last month to restore the net neutrality protections, but the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House.
States have also started to create their own net neutrality rules. However, the FCC included a measure in its repeal order that blocks states from creating their own rules, laying the groundwork for legal battles over the open internet laws.



http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... p-dem-says
Quote:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt has instituted policies that are delaying or obstructing the release of documents under public records requests, a top congressional Democrat says.

Two Pruitt aides who recently spoke with staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee detailed a set of policies Pruitt has instituted to prioritize Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the Obama administration and have political appointees review certain documents before they are released.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 12 Jun , 2018 2:22 pm
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Supposedly, Kim Jong Un has agreed to end nuclear missile development. It would be nice if this happens, but we'll have to see, North Korea has a very long history of making promises and then breaking them.

Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy, updated
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron

In the meantime, Trump got exactly what he wanted from this - a boost in his public approval ratings before the midterm elections.



It doesn't sound like South Korea had any input into Trump's decision to end joint military exercises in return for a vague promise from Kim:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ignificant
Quote:
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden called President Trump’s decision to suspend joint military exercises on the Korean peninsula a “pretty significant concession” by the U.S. to North Korea.

...The Pentagon has said the exercises are essential to alliance-building and military readiness.

South Korea said shortly after the announcement that it needs to figure out the "precise meaning" of Trump's decision.

Edit: No, South Korea didn't know. The US military was also caught by surprise.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-agreed-ca ... ary-972322
Quote:
President Donald Trump's announcement Tuesday that he had agreed to cancel war games in Korea reportedly came as a shock to South Korea and U.S. military leaders.

U.S. Forces in Korea "has received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of training exercises," said USFK spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Lovett, Reuters reported. Lovett said, as of now, the U.S. military plans to "continue with our current military posture until we receive updated guidance" from the Department of Defense or Indo-Pacific Command. This includes the Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises scheduled for the fall.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -is-weaker
Quote:
Conservative scholar and former CIA officer Bruce Klingner says President Trump's proposal for denuclearization with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday is weaker than the terms offered by former President Bill Clinton during his administration.

"This is very disappointing. Each of the four main points was in previous documents with NK, some in a stronger, more encompassing way. The denuke bullet is weaker than the Six Party Talks language. And no mention of CVID, verification, human rights," Klingner, who is now a Northeast Asia senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation said in a tweet.

http://thehill.com/policy/international ... -trump-kim
Quote:
President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday signed an agreement committing the United States to unspecified “security guarantees” for Pyongyang in exchange for a denuclearized Korean peninsula to cap off their historic summit in Singapore.

Read the document below.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -the-great
Quote:
When asked by a reporter if he had notes to verify details after the meeting in Singapore, Trump said he didn’t need to. “I don't have to verify because I have one of the great memories of all time,” Trump said.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ersonality
Quote:
President Trump said Tuesday that he was surprised by North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un’s “great personality.”

“Really, he’s got a great personality,” Trump told Voice of America contributor Greta Van Susteren after the historic summit. “He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator.”

...What is not surprising is that Kim “loves his people,” Trump said. The president also said Tuesday in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the North Korean people “love” Kim back. Kim faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses according to international watchdog organizations.
He's also the guy who murdered his brother and uncle and has ordered many of his own citizens to be tortured and/or executed. Many of them are also close to starving, while Kim gets the best of everything.So now Trump is buddies with Kim and despises Trudeau and Merkel. Interesting world we live in.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 12 Jun , 2018 9:50 pm
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In other news:
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch ... elters-for
Quote:
Texas health inspectors found nearly 150 violations at more than a dozen shelters across the state that are housing immigrant children, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Violations from the last year at Southwest Key Program shelters include inadequate supervision and lack of timely medical care, according to the news service. Children were also given medications they were allergic to, it added.
I assume some of the parents might have known their kids were allergic, had they been allowed to stay with them.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... s-to-house
Quote:
The Trump administration is considering erecting tent cities at a military base in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant children currently held in detention, McClatchy reported on Tuesday.

In the coming weeks, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials will visit Fort Bliss, the Army base near El Paso, Texas, to look at the land where they are considering building a tent city that would hold between 1,000 to 5,000 children, U.S. officials with knowledge of the plan told McClatchy.
Worth noting: accompanied children are classified as unaccompanied children by the Trump administration, once they take them away from their parents.


http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... ld-produce
Quote:
Interior Department officials canceled a major mountaintop removal mining study because they didn’t think it would yield new findings, the agency’s internal watchdog said. Mary Kendall, Interior’s deputy inspector general, explained the finding in a letter to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), which Grijalva released Tuesday.

Interior officials had never publicly given that reasoning previously, saying only that the funding for the study that was being conducted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) was undergoing financial review.

But Kendall’s staff also found that Interior did not have documentation to justify their conclusion that the study wouldn’t yield new information.“Other than a general document entitled ‘Secretary of the Interior’s Priorities,’ departmental officials were unable to provide specific criteria, used for their determination whether to allow or cease certain grants and cooperative agreements,” Kendall wrote to Grijalva.

...NAS announced in August 2017 that the money had been halted. The research project was meant to examine potential health impacts on people who live near mountaintop removal, a coal-mining process in which large volumes of earth are moved to get to coal.


A setback for Perry and Trump, a win for consumers who won't have to pay higher prices to keep failing coal plants open:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... l-security
Quote:
Federal energy regulators on Tuesday indicated they do not see a national security risk from the closure of coal and nuclear power plants in the U.S.

Asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing whether they believed the U.S. faced a national security emergency in wholesale power markets because of the closures, none of the five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) answered in the affirmative.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 13 Jun , 2018 1:05 pm
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Despite his "great memory" of events during the private portion of the Trump-Kim meeting, Trump hasn't mentioned this:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -sanctions
Quote:
North Korean-controlled media on Wednesday reported that President Trump agreed to lift sanctions against the country during his historic summit with leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, Reuters reported... North Korea's KCNA news agency cites Trump making the pledge to lift the economic barriers after saying the U.S. would end joint military exercises with South Korea.

Following the summit, Trump had indicated that sanctions would remain until North Korea began the denuclearization process saying of easing sanctions, “I hope it’s going to be soon. At a certain point, I actually look forward to taking them off.”

Reuters did not receive immediate comment from U.S. officials.

The Hill has also reached out to the White House for comment.
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... washington
Quote:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accepted President Trump's invitation to visit Washington, D.C., North Korea's Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday evening.

Trump said during the trip that he “absolutely” planned on inviting Kim to the White House. The president also said that Kim had accepted the invitation “at the appropriate time, a little bit further down the road.” "That will be a day that I very much look forward to at the appropriate time," the president said.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... uses-after
Quote:
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is tweeting out coverage and analysis of human rights abuses in North Korea, just one day after President Trump’s historic summit with the country’s leader on Tuesday. The center has shared older posts on the human rights violations as well as pieces arguing for human rights to be included in future talks with North Korea.

Analyses of the meeting from The Economist:
https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/06/ ... agreements
Quote:
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un sign the blandest of agreements
All the details are left to underlings to sort out
Quote:
“WE HAD a really fantastic meeting. A lot of progress. Really, very positive, I think better than anybody could have expected, top of the line, really good.” So said Donald Trump after his first meeting with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s blood-drenched dictator, in Singapore on June 12th. Alas, a short while later North-Korea watchers realised that, as so often with Mr Trump, the rhetoric didn’t quite match the reality. The most substantial thing to come out of the summit may well have been the dark chocolate tart served at the “working lunch” which Mr Trump and Mr Kim held with their delegations after meeting face to face.

The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... it/562610/
Quote:
Trump Got Nearly Nothing From Kim Jong Un

Maybe this is the beginning of something big. But it started off small.
Quote:
On Tuesday, in Singapore, Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un shook hands, strode along colonnades, dined on stuffed cucumber and beef short rib confit, and signed a joint statement. But if this was, as Trump declared afterward, “a very important event in world history,” the president has little of substance to show for it beyond chummier relations with Kim—for the moment, at least.

In the joint statement, North Korea did not commit to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons program—a longstanding demand of the Trump administration. Instead, Kim merely reaffirmed what he had already agreed to during his April summit with South Korean President Moon Jae In: to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” North Korea, in other words, committed not to denuclearization but to the goal of denuclearization.

And Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... t-answered
Quote:
12 Burning Questions About the Trump-Kim Summit, Answered
The meeting of the two world leaders on Tuesday left many open questions.
Quote:
Both Trump and Kim got things they want. Trump appears to have resolved the immediate threat of war and cast himself as a peacemaker. But Kim’s wins — suspended U.S. military drills, new international status, improved relations with China and South Korea and talk of easing sanctions — are more substantial.
Quote:
There is not enough known about North Korea to fully explain Kim’s motivations. But the North Koreans have expertly escalated and de-escalated tensions to suit their needs over the years. Now that Kim has a hydrogen bomb and missiles that can deliver it to the U.S., he says he doesn’t need to test them anymore and can dedicate more of his resources toward the economy.
I imagine the disaster at Kim's nuclear test site might also have played a role. If nothing else, he can play nice for a bit, while secretly getting his program relaunched somewhere else.




http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/39 ... defend-key
Quote:
A senior career Department of Justice (DOJ) official has resigned, one week after the Trump administration made a controversial announcement that it would argue key parts of ObamaCare are unconstitutional.

...Last week, the DOJ wrote in a filing that it wouldn’t defend ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The move broke with historical practice, where the DOJ defends federal laws, and sided in part with a challenge to the law brought by a coalition of Republican-led states.

According to the Post, McElvain had worked at DOJ for over 20 years and submitted his resignation Friday, the day after DOJ announced it wouldn’t defend parts of ObamaCare. DOJ’s decision reversed years of legal work McElvain and the department had amassed to defend ObamaCare in court.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/39 ... ever-heard
Quote:
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate's health committee, called the Trump administration's argument against ObamaCare in a court case "as far-fetched as any I've ever heard."

...The states, and the DOJ, argue that Congress's repeal of the tax penalty associated with ObamaCare's individual mandate makes the law's protections for people with pre-existing conditions unconstitutional.

Alexander said it wasn't the intent to repeal protections for people with pre-existing conditions when it repealed the mandate penalty late last year.



https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... on/560105/
Quote:
It’s Time for Trump Voters to Face the Bitter Truth

Republicans elected a president who promised to take on D.C.—instead, Trump has presided over an extraordinary auction of access and influence.
Quote:
Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” while running for office. Voters gave him the opportunity to follow through when they propelled him to the White House. Instead, he surrounded himself with people who saw his victory as an opportunity to enrich themselves by selling the promise of access or influence.

This betrayal of the American public warrants more attention. Trump voters who wanted to rid Washington of sellouts should be most upset, but no one wants to admit that the person they voted for was misrepresenting his intentions. And those who rely on commentators like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, and Tucker Carlson for information lack many relevant facts.

Last edited by aninkling on Wed 13 Jun , 2018 6:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 13 Jun , 2018 5:56 pm
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More news today and it's very disturbing. Remember McCarthy's loyalty tests? Well, this time it's loyalty specifically to Trump.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... sonnel-for
Quote:
A senior adviser at the State Department has been quietly vetting employees for months on their loyalty to President Trump, including reviewing social media posts to determine their political leanings. Mari Stull, a senior adviser at the agency's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, has examined staffers' social media for any signs of differences with administration policy, according to a report from Foreign Policy.

Stull is also reportedly "making lists" of employees whose loyalty she questions.

...At least three senior officials in the bureau... are expected to leave the agency or move to different positions as a result of Stull's efforts, according to Foreign Policy.

Some of her efforts reportedly include researching whether employees had signed off on Obama administration policies opposed by the Trump administration, even if the staffer did not personally back the policy.



Republicans don't want people in coastal states to be allowed to reject oil wells off their coastlines. Most governors on the east and west coasts (except Maine) and most voters in coastal states don't want drilling.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... n-offshore
Quote:
House Republicans unveiled a draft proposal this week that would place fines on states that block offshore gas and oil drilling.

...It would allow states to disapprove of offshore drilling for gas and oil in half of its lease blocks without facing any penalties. However, states with proposed lease sales that disapprove of drilling in more than 50 percent of the blocks would have to pay a fee equal to at least one-tenth the estimated revenue the government would have made if it had leased the blocks.

...The move would help pressure local politicians to fall in line with President Trump’s plan to increase offshore leasing.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 14 Jun , 2018 3:23 pm
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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -immigrant
Quote:
Protests are planned nationwide Thursday over the Trump administration’s policy separating immigrant parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

...Events, including rallies and vigils, are planned in more than 60 cities and towns in the U.S., according to Families Belong Together.
https://www.familiesbelongtogether.org/

http://thehill.com/latino/392136-undocu ... astfeeding
Quote:
An undocumented immigrant from Honduras said that federal officials separated her from her daughter while she was breastfeeding her child in a detention center, an attorney told CNN.

Natalia Cornelio, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who interviewed the immigrant, told the network that the woman was handcuffed when she resisted the authorities. The woman was being held in a detention center when the incident took place, after she was apprehended for entering the country illegally.Cornelio said the woman sobbed while recounting the incident.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... s-that-are
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his calls to readmit Russia to the Group of Seven (G-7), arguing it would give him an opportunity to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

...“Now, I’m not for Russia. I’m for the United States," he continued. "But, as an example, if Vladimir Putin were sitting next to me at a table instead of one of the others… I could say, 'would you do me a favor and get out of Syria? Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine?'"

“If he were at that meeting, I could ask him to do things that are good for the world, that are good for our country that are good for him,” he added.

Russia was expelled from the then-Group of Eight (G-8) in 2014 for its widely denounced annexation of Crimea.
What, his phone calls with Putin and plans for a meeting aren't time enough for Trump to ask Putin stupid questions with an obvious answer?

http://thehill.com/policy/international ... mea-at-g-7
Quote:
President Trump reportedly questioned the reasoning behind NATO's opposition to Russia's annexation of Crimea and appeared to defend Russia's explanation for the move during conversations with world leaders at the G-7 last weekend.

Two diplomatic sources told BuzzFeed News that Trump told world leaders over dinner that Crimea was part of Russia because most of its population speaks the Russian language, adding that the president appeared to question why world leaders had sided with Ukraine over Russia. "Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world," the president said, according to one source.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill on BuzzFeed's reporting.

Trump either lives in a different world than the rest of us, or he's lying for the benefit of Fox viewers:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... cky-it-was
Quote:
President Trump insists that his relationship with the Group of Seven (G-7) leaders remains “great.” “It really wasn’t rocky when I left. It was great,” told Fox News on Wednesday.

...Trump said he even got the chance to speak with Japanese Prime Minister Abe after the G-7 summit over the weekend, and that Abe gave him positive reviews despite reports of growing tensions between Trump, Merkel and other G-7 leaders over trade disputes.

“I spoke to him just recently,” Trump said. “I just told him about what had happened. And he said its amazing because when you left it was like fine.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/39 ... -a-mistake
Quote:
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel warned Wednesday that those who don't embrace President Trump's agenda "will be making a mistake."

McDaniel sent the stern message on Wednesday night, and was met with backlash from conservatives, liberals and members of the media.

Complacency is our enemy. Anyone that does not embrace the @realDonaldTrump agenda of making America great again will be making a mistake.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) June 14, 2018
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/39216 ... rip-on-gop
Quote:
President Trump has solidified his grip on the Republican Party, forcing GOP lawmakers to think twice about challenging him in public for fear that it might come back to hurt them politically.

Rep. Mark Sanford's (R-S.C.) loss in Tuesday’s primary is the latest reminder to Republicans of the president's popularity with the GOP base and his ability to inflict revenge when angered... The message to Republicans was unmistakable: Trump will get involved in your primary if you cross him.

On Wednesday, some predicted Republicans will be even more afraid to go after Trump after what happened to Sanford. “Most already are,” added Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), an outspoken Trump critic who is retiring from Congress.

...Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, vehemently disagrees with Trump’s use of tariffs, but he said last week that he had concerns about backing a measure sponsored by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to curtail Trump’s use of tariffs for fear it would imperil the farm bill.“I don't want to rile the waters ... I don't think the president will be very pleased,” he told reporters last week.
And don't forget that you can't express an negative opinion about Trump or his policies outside the workplace, or the government personnel now examining employees' social media for loyalty will come after you (yesterday's news).



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/nyre ... neral.html
Quote:
The New York State attorney general’s office filed a scathingly worded lawsuit on Thursday taking aim at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, accusing the charity and the Trump family of sweeping violations of campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential campaign....The attorney general also sent referral letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission for possible further action, adding to Mr. Trump’s extensive legal challenges.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, culminated a nearly two-year investigation of Mr. Trump’s charity, which became a subject of scrutiny during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. While such foundations are supposed to be devoted to charitable activities, the complaint asserts that Mr. Trump’s was often used to settle legal claims against his various businesses, even spending $10,000 on a portrait of Mr. Trump that was hung at one of his golf clubs.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/39226 ... on-lawsuit
Quote:
In a series of tweets, Trump took aim at former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who resigned last month after being accused of physically abusing women. Schneiderman’s successor, Barbara Underwood, brought the case against Trump on Thursday.

“The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000,” Trump wrote. “I won’t settle this case!”

...The president also vowed he would not settle a class action fraud suit against the now-defunct Trump University. He eventually agreed last year to a $25 million settlement.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 15 Jun , 2018 1:09 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -was-wrong
Quote:
President Trump on Friday declared that the conclusion of a report by the Justice Department's internal watchdog was “wrong,” insisting that it showed that top FBI officials acted with political bias against him.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -listen-to
Quote:
President Trump said on Friday that he wants "his people" to listen to him like North Koreans listen to their leader, Kim Jong Un.

"He’s the head of a country. And I mean, he is the strong head," Trump said of Kim on "Fox & Friends." "Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

The president praised Kim once again on Friday, saying that the he "hit it off" with the North Korean premier during a summit meeting in Singapore this week. "We get along very well, we had good chemistry," Trump said.

http://thehill.com/policy/international ... cil-report
Quote:
The U.S. is reportedly planning to pull out of the UN’s Human Rights Council after clashes over key issues such as Israel. A source told Reuters that the move could be “imminent.” The council will begin a three-week session in Geneva on Monday. Other diplomatic sources told Reuters that the withdrawal was “not a question of if but of when.”



http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... nese-goods
Quote:
President Trump on Friday announced that the United States would impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese products, making good on a threat that has been months in the making.

The White House's move is expected to ramp up trade tensions with Beijing and possibly risk a cooperative partnership to help denuclearize the Korean peninsula. "My great friendship with President Xi of China and our country’s relationship with China are both very important to me," Trump said in a statement.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... tdated-and
Quote:
China's Ministry of Commerce issued a highly critical statement on Friday calling on countries to take “joint actions” against the United States over President Trump’s actions on tariffs.

...The ministry vowed to impose taxation “of the same scale” on the U.S. “We will immediately introduce taxation measures of the same scale and strength,” the statement said. “All the economic and trade achievements previously reached by the two parties will no longer be valid at the same time.”
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... er-tariffs
Quote:
Canadians have started to boycott U.S. goods in the wake of President Trump's war of words with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the recent steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, the European Union, and Mexico.

CTV News reported on Thursday that Canadian shoppers were boycotting Florida oranges, Kentucky bourbon and California wine over the diplomatic rift.



http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3923 ... ass-in-one
Quote:
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Thursday that Congress could easily fix the policy of separating migrant families at the border and could pass both chambers next week if proposed as stand-alone legislation. “Stop pretending that banning the separation of children from parents is complex legislation,” Schatz tweeted Thursday.

He also outlined how lawmakers could change the language. “It’s ONE LINE, and it could pass ‘on suspension’ in the House on Monday, and by Unanimous Consent in the Senate on Tuesday. Attaching it to a bigger immigration bill is killing it,” Schatz wrote.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ation-bill
Quote:
President Trump on Friday said that he would not sign the House GOP’s compromise immigration bill, delivering a major blow to Republican leadership’s plans.

“I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” during an impromptu interview on the White House lawn. “I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. I have to have that.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ies-at-the
Quote:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions invoked the Bible on Thursday to defend the Trump administration's immigration policies, including separating families who illegally cross the border into the U.S.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said during a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
On the other hand, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has called the policy immoral and the Southern Baptist Convention (conservative evangelicals) is calling for immigration reform that includes “the priority of family unity.”


http://thehill.com/latino/392361-trump- ... ren-report
Quote:
The Trump administration will use a city in Texas to house immigrant children, including those who have been separated from their parents as part of a "zero tolerance" policy at the border, according to NBC News.

The report says the administration will put up tents in Tornillo, Texas. The "tent city," as its being called, will be built by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and will hold about 450 beds for children.
This is Texas. In the summer. With young children, who are prone to dehydration. What could possibly go wrong?



At one of the detention centers, they have put up a mural for the children to look at, with a picture of Trump (or rather, someone who looks vaguely like a much younger, more attractive Trump) in front of an American flag, and the words "Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war” in both English and Spanish. I found a picture of it at the Huffington Post. According to them, it's a quote from Trump's book, in reference to his attempts to evict tenants in 1985.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ch ... 7a3d7aedbd

I have not yet seen an explanation of its purpose, but to me, it looks like he's telling the incarcerated children "we're evicting you."


I've been avoiding references to Hitler wannabees, but as one person said, not long ago, "sometimes a wolf is really a wolf." Trump's latest praise for a brutal North Korean dictator, contempt for the conclusions of a Justice Dept report, new "disloyalty lists" for federal workers, and complete disregard for a growing outcry against tearing children from their parents, together with this worshipful mural and Congress enabling everything he does, paints a disturbing picture.





Edit: Interesting news. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another Trump meltdown at this.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... urt-filing
Quote:
Federal prosecutors have reconstructed about 16 pages of shredded documents as part of material seized in raids involving President Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen earlier this year.

...Prosecutors also announced that FBI agents had recovered more than 700 pages of encrypted messages between Cohen and other recipients from the private chat apps WhatsApp and Signal.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 18 Jun , 2018 1:31 pm
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... orth-korea
Quote:
President Trump on Sunday took aim at the media for its critical coverage of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Funny how the Fake News, in a coordinated effort with each other, likes to say I gave sooo much to North Korea because I 'met,' " Trump tweeted. "That’s because that’s all they have to disparage! We got so much for peace in the world, & more is being added in finals. Even got our hostages/remains!" he added.

...Trump in a subsequent tweet on Sunday that the deal "is being praised and celebrated all over Asia."

The denuclearization deal with North Korea is being praised and celebrated all over Asia. They are so happy! Over here, in our country, some people would rather see this historic deal fail than give Trump a win, even if it does save potentially millions & millions of lives!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2018
Asian newspapers don't seem to agree:
http://www.atimes.com/the-uncertain-leg ... re-summit/
Quote:
US President Donald Trump returned from his short summit meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un in an exultant mood. “Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump tweeted. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” He subsequently told reporters, “I have solved that problem.”

There is only one catch: what Trump claimed was untrue. The nuclear threat posed by North Korea remains undiminished. The joint statement issued by the two leaders was as brief – just 391 words – as it was vague.

The statement was far more about aspirations than accomplishments. North Korea committed only “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” Missing was any definition of what denuclearization might entail, a timeline for implementation, or a reference to how any actions would be verified. Other issues related to nuclear weapons, including ballistic missiles, were not even mentioned. Thus far, at least, the agreement with North Korea compares unfavorably to the Iran nuclear deal that Trump denounced – and then renounced a month before meeting Kim.
Quote:
In fact, some of Trump’s post-summit remarks have actually weakened the prospect of achieving his goals. His depiction of the summit as a great success that solved the nuclear problem will make it that much tougher to maintain international support for the economic sanctions that are still needed to pressure North Korea. Trump also did himself no favor by unilaterally announcing that the US would no longer conduct what he described as “provocative” war games, also known as military exercises meant to ensure readiness and enhance deterrence. In so doing, he not only alarmed several US allies, but also gave away what he could have traded for something from North Korea.
Sounds much like what the mainstream US press is saying.


Some other perspectives from Asian newspapers:

https://japantoday.com/category/feature ... n-a-corner
Quote:
China may not have been at the table for Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's historic summit, but it still scored a strategic victory and sent out a clear message: no one puts Beijing in the corner.
..."The results of the Singapore Summit are basically in line with China's expectations," said Wu Xinbo, an expert on international relations at Shanghai's Fudan University.

...That outcome made China "the strategic winner of the summit," according to one western diplomat, who asked for anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. Previously, "they would never have dreamed of Trump halting the joint manoeuvres with South Korea and mentioning possibly withdrawing troops from the South in the future."

..."The Chinese have long believed that if they could actually dislodge US troops from the region that would be the key to eliminating or severely diminishing US influence in the region and accelerating the creation of a more China-centric region."

Following the Singapore summit, China has made it clear it intends to play a leading role in the negotiations, couching that insistence in diplomatic offers to lend its assistance. The US likely has no choice but to play along.
http://www.atimes.com/article/russia-in ... orea-game/
Quote:
Russia inserts itself into North Korea game
Japan's Abe is looking sidelined while Russia's Vladimir Putin adroitly places himself in the Korea strategy space
Quote:
Putin reiterated Russia’s cooperation and stressed its readiness to “establish ties” in economic cooperation. Without doubt, the long-standing Russian proposals to link the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Korean railways systems, and to run a new pipeline from the Russian Far East through North Korea to energy-thirsty South Korea, are high on Putin’s agenda.
https://japantoday.com/category/politic ... onomic-aid
Quote:
The United States expects Japan to play a "significant" role in shouldering the costs of North Korea's denuclearization and future economic development, given its economic power and its interest in the stabilization of Pyongyang, the U.S. ambassador to Japan said Friday.

...After his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday in Singapore, U.S. President Donald Trump said Japan and South Korea -- key U.S. allies in Asia -- are prepared to help North Korea "very greatly" with the cost of denuclearization, while the United States would not have to help with the costs.
Incidentally, this article also says that, in Asia, the Trump administration is blaming the collapse of the TPP on Congress, not Trump:
Quote:
Hagerty denied the possibility of the United States returning to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying that the U.S. Congress would not allow it. Trump pulled the world's largest economy out of the free trade deal soon after taking office in January 2017.

"I hope the people in Japan can understand the political reality is that we do not have adequate support for the TPP," Hagerty said. "That is a dead-end conversation. We have to find a new path to work together on trade."

...Japan has said it is open to the United States rejoining the group after Trump said earlier this year Washington will consider doing so if it is able to negotiate a "substantially better" agreement.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/as ... s-10443772
Quote:
Trump's summit last week with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un failed to address Japanese security concerns such as a missile programme that Tokyo sees as a direct threat. Japan's defence establishment was also taken aback by the US president saying he would halt "expensive" military exercises with South Korea that have long been seen in Tokyo as a deterrent to North Korea's threats.

"The alliance has changed from one based on shared values to a transactional alliance," Katsuyuki Kawai, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker who advises Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on foreign affairs, told Reuters. "That is the reality now," he said, stressing that this was his personal view, not that of the government.
Kawai said he was most surprised by the fact Trump cited cost as the reason for halting the joint exercises, long considered by Washington as vital to deter Pyongyang's threats.

"I think this summit will serve as a trigger for the Japanese people to begin to realise that it is risky to leave Japan's destiny to another country," he added.

Abe, who has spoken with Trump face-to-face or by telephone dozens of times including days before the US-North Korea summit, has put a brave face on the president's meeting with Kim, characterising it as a first step toward denuclearisation.... Some lawmakers close to Abe echoed the positive assessment.... Others agreed expectations in Tokyo for the summit had been too high. Washington originally insisted any agreement include a North Korean commitment to "complete, irreversible and verifiable denuclearisation", a position backed by Japan.


A perspective on the G7 summit from Japan:
https://japantoday.com/category/politic ... pan-report
Quote:
The Group of Seven summit gathering of top industrialized democracies finished in disarray after the U.S. president abruptly rejected its consensus statement and bitterly attacked Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Behind the scenes, Trump's counterparts were dismayed by verbal jabs on topics ranging from trade to terrorism and migration, The Wall Street Journal said, quoting European officials who were present.

At one point he described migration as a big problem for Europe then said to Abe: "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon," creating a sense of irritation in the room, according to an EU official.

The source added that when the topic turned to Iran and terrorism, Trump took aim at French President Emmanuel Macron, saying: "You must know about this, Emmanuel, because all the terrorists are in Paris." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also came under fire and was repeatedly described by Trump as a "brutal killer" in reference to the bloc's antitrust and tax fines against U.S. tech companies that have run into billions of dollars.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/39259 ... ry-tariffs
Quote:
Chinese officials announced retaliatory tariffs aimed at the United States on Saturday that target American exports such as electric cars, soybeans and whiskey.

...The tariffs, which will go into effect July 6, include 25 percent duties on soybeans, electric cars, orange juice, whiskey, lobsters, salmon and cigars, the finance ministry told the AP in a statement.

According to the report, the selected products were chosen to minimize their impact to the Chinese economy — namely items that can be imported from elsewhere — while also targeting U.S. exports from rural areas that voted more strongly for President Trump.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... olicy-poll
Quote:
More Americans see themselves aligned with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau than President Trump in the two leaders' conflict over trade policy, a new poll finds.

A Global News/Ipsos poll released Saturday finds that Trudeau enjoys a 20-point advantage over the U.S. president among Americans when it comes to which leader respondents think is better handling the discussions over tariffs and other trade issues.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 12271.html
Quote:
U.S. President Makes Life Tough for German Companies
Seldom has an American president exploited the country's economic power to the degree the Trump administration has. Washington appears to be attacking German companies at every opportunity.
Quote:
Donald Trump recently said that he no longer wants to see the sight of a Mercedes on Fifth Avenue in New York. It was a right hook aimed squarely at the chin of Daimler and the German economy. And the timing could not have been better. The American president knows how vulnerable Germany automobile manufacturers are in the wake of the diesel scandal and also how important the American market is to them. The Department of Justice is currently investigating Daimler and the Trump administration is also considering whether to impose higher import tariffs on German carmakers. Trump views both measures as an opportunity to protect the domestic car industry while at the same time weakening its German competitors.

But beyond Volkswagen, Daimler and the others, Deutsche Bank, Bayer and numerous other German companies both small and large are beginning to realize just how skillful the Trump administration can be when it comes to applying pressure on foreign firms. Washington, it would seem, is pursuing its "America First" doctrine at all levels -- in the form of tariffs, taxes and fines, but also on the level of individual companies.

Irritation is growing within both the European business community and the German government over the Trump administration's ruthless approach.

...rarely has anyone exploited the power of the currency to the degree Trump is doing. "Donald Trump has turned the dollar into a weapon," says Davide Serra, CEO of Algebris Asset Management.... He says Trump is using the dollar to assert America's influence on the corporate world far beyond its own borders.
In the last big recession, we learned how interdependent the world economies are. If Trump brings down our allies' economies, the U.S. will not escape either.
This morning, he was also attacking Germany in his tweets about immigration. It looked like an effort to distract his base from the ruthlessness of his recent immigration policies in the U.S.




http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ions-could
Quote:
The number of migrant families being separated upon crossing into the U.S. along the Southern border could double, according to a Border Patrol chief for the Rio Grande Valley.

Manuel Padilla Jr., the chief in charge of enforcing the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy along the border's most-traveled segment, told The Washington Post on Saturday that the number will continue to increase as Border Patrol works to ramp up its prosecutions of those who cross into the U.S. illegally.

The Trump administration began implementing its zero-tolerance policy last month, stating that the its goal was to deter future immigrants from attempting to make the journey across Mexico into the U.S. The policy seeks to prosecute those crossing into the U.S. illegally, often leading children to be separated from their parents while they await prosecutorial action.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ust-report
Quote:
The government could be holding up to 30,000 migrant children by the end of August if current detention rates continue, the Washington Examiner reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently taking in about 250 migrant children a day, a senior administration official told the Examiner. The department is responsible for migrant children after they are separated from their parents. HHS expects to continue taking in children at that rate for the next two months, according to the official, meaning it could be responsible for 18,500 more children by the end of the summer.

Currently, 11,500 children are under HHS custody, the official told the Examiner.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... y-policies
Quote:
The Trump administration appears poised for a fight over its practice of separating migrant families who cross the border illegally as a growing number of lawmakers voice concerns over it.

Democrats and some Republicans have in recent days visited facilities used to house separated family members, leading to new questions about the process and growing calls for the so-called zero tolerance immigration enforcement policy to end.

...On Sunday, members of the White House acknowledged their distaste for the policy, even as the administration indicates it has no intention of unilaterally ending it.
btw, I noticed that a Japanese newspaper did not hesitate to call Trump's claim that it's the Democrats fault a lie.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... as-immoral
Quote:
Former first lady Laura Bush tore into the Trump administration for separating migrant families at the border, calling the “zero tolerance” policy “cruel” and “immoral.” Bush penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, which was published Sunday night as public outcry over the hundreds of children in detention centers intensified.

...Bush’s commentary comes as more images and accounts from inside the detention centers have emerged, drawing harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
http://thehill.com/latino/392720-dem-le ... t-children
Quote:
Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) led a protest on Sunday outside a tent city in Tornillo, Texas that houses migrant children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Hundreds gathered for the protests on Father’s Day near El Paso, less than 24 hours after O’Rourke called for people to take action, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Trump spouts more lies, trying to defend his policy:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ion-policy
Quote:
President Trump on Monday doubled down on his controversial policy of separating children from parents when families illegally cross the border, while also calling on Congress to change laws to end it.

... “Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country,” he wrote. “Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.”



http://thehill.com/homenews/news/392648 ... d-the-same
Quote:
Tony Schwartz, the author who ghostwrote President Trump's famous 1987 book "The Art of the Deal," said Saturday that the president would act like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if he were given the same authority.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ngest-most
Quote:
President Trump lavished praise on his supporters Saturday morning via Twitter, calling his voters "the smartest" and the "most loyal" in the history of U.S. presidents.

In a tweet, the president seemed to suggest that as more Americans turned to support him, the country itself would "get stronger."

"My supporters are the smartest, strongest, most hard working and most loyal that we have seen in our countries history. It is a beautiful thing to watch as we win elections and gather support from all over the country. As we get stronger, so does our country. Best numbers ever!" he tweeted.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... trump-lies
Quote:
Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh (Ill.) said Sunday that every Republican privately admits the president lies all the time but is afraid to say it publicly.

“Every single Republican in the House & in the Senate knows, and privately admits, that this President lies all the time,” Walsh, who is now a conservative talk radio host, wrote on Twitter. “And every single one of these Republicans is afraid to acknowledge it publicly," Walsh said. “The Republican Party will pay a price for this cowardice.”



http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ing-manure
Quote:
The National Guard troops that President Trump sent to the U.S.–Mexico border in April are performing menial tasks to assist U.S. Border Patrol. A soldier told Politico on Thursday that they have been feeding Border Patrol's horses and shoveling manure.

...In order to keep them safe, National Guard troops are not permitted to patrol or participate in detainment operations for migrants crossing the border, officials told the outlet. Late last month, the president of the labor union representing Border Patrol agents criticized Trump's deployment, calling it a “colossal waste of resources.”

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said last month that they have “seen no benefit” from the National Guard presence.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Jude
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 18 Jun , 2018 3:07 pm
Aspiring to heresy
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aninkling wrote:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... as-immoral
Quote:
Former first lady Laura Bush tore into the Trump administration for separating migrant families at the border, calling the “zero tolerance” policy “cruel” and “immoral.” Bush penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, which was published Sunday night as public outcry over the hundreds of children in detention centers intensified.

...Bush’s commentary comes as more images and accounts from inside the detention centers have emerged, drawing harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
Hmm. First time I've had occasion to respect the Bush's for anything.

(sp? "Bushes"? )

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Mon 18 Jun , 2018 5:27 pm
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I don't know much about Laura Bush. From what I've read, she's mostly stayed out of politics - never said much about public policy while Bush was president. It seems very unusual for her to go out of her way to write an editorial.


Trump and Sessions are hunkering down and refusing to budge:

Trump lies, blatantly, then doubles down with his usual incoherent bullshit ("good for the children, good for the country, good for the world"? What the hell is that supposed to mean, in terms on a concrete policy that will do all 3?):
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... grant-camp
Quote:
A defiant President Trump on Monday defended his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents who illegally enter the U.S., saying the nation must not become a “camp” for migrants. “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said at the White House during a meeting for his space council.

Trump again blamed Democrats for the problem, though the separations are a result of a directive issued by his own administration earlier this year.

“I say it’s very strongly the Democrats fault,” he asserted Monday. "If the Democrats would sit down instead of obstructing, we could have something done very quickly,” Trump added later. “Good for the children, good for the country, good for the world.”

And Session implies it's blackmail so Congress will spend our tax money on Trump's idiotic wall:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... l-and-pass
Quote:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that if Congress passes legislation to build a wall on the Mexican border, the Trump administration wouldn't need its "zero tolerance" border policy that has resulted in the controversial separation of parents from their children.

DHS Secretary Nielsen:
http://thehill.com/latino/392767-dhs-se ... -the-press
Quote:
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a gathering of sheriffs on Monday to ignore press reports of mistreatment of migrant minors separated from their families at the southwest border.

"It is important to note that these minors are very well taken care of — don’t believe the press," Nielsen said to the National Sheriff's Association while addressing reports of substandard treatment of minors.

"They are very well taken care of — you know this, as many of you have detention facilities of your own," she added.

http://thehill.com/latino/392790-americ ... y-is-child
Quote:
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday said President Trump's “zero tolerance” policy separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border “amounts to child abuse.” Dr. Colleen Kraft in an appearance on CNN described the many ways Trump’s policy emotionally harms children and laid out in detail what she witnessed when she toured an immigration detention center.

“I can’t describe to you the room I was in with the toddlers,” Kraft said. “Normally toddlers are rambunctious and running around. We had one child just screaming and crying, and the others were really silent. And this is not normal activity or brain development with these children.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... er-diapers
Quote:
A teenager told an advocate that she had to teach kids at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in Texas how to change a young girl’s diaper after she was separated from her aunt, The Associated Press reported Monday. According to the news agency, the 16-year-old girl had been taking of a 4-year-old girl she didn’t know for three days. Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said the teenager told her the story on Friday after the agency allowed her to spend several hours in the facility.

...Brane said the young girl had been ”so traumatized that she wasn’t talking,” and added that she “just curled up in a little ball.”


http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/s ... separation
Quote:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said on Monday that he will back legislation to prevent the separation of immigrant families along the border, solidifying Democratic support for the bill. Manchin's decision means all 49 members of the Democratic caucus, which includes independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), are signing on to the legislation. “As a father, grandfather, and Christian, I am wholeheartedly opposed to any policy that allows innocent children to be separated from their parents as they enter our country," Manchin said in a statement.
The legislation, spearheaded by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), would only allow children to be separated from a parent if they are being abused, trafficked or if a court decides "it is in the best interests of the child."

...The Feinstein bill, however, faces an unlikely, uphill climb in a GOP-controlled Congress, despite growing backlash over the Trump administration's policies that are resulting in the separation of immigrant families at the border.

No Republican senator has said they will support Feinstein's bill, which would need 60 votes to clear the Senate.



EDIT:
Surprise, surprise - a new Trump administration scandal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexand ... erest/amp/
Quote:
Amid President Trump’s headaches confirming cabinet secretaries,... Wilbur Ross was a tonic. With his blue power suit and decades of dealmaking, he had the look and the résumé of a commerce secretary. And unlike his boss, Ross promised to divest from almost all his holdings upon entering government, drawing bipartisan praise en route to an easy confirmation. ... In November 2017, Ross confirmed in writing to the federal Office of Government Ethics that he had divested everything he promised.

But that was not true.
Forbes found that, while Ross was Secretary of Commerce, he maintained "stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating."
Quote:
To this day, Ross’ family apparently continues to have an interest in these toxic holdings. Rather than dump them all, the commerce secretary sold some of his interests to Goldman Sachs—and, according to Ross himself, put others in a trust for his family members. He continued to deal with China, Russia and others while evidently knowing that his family’s interests were tied to those countries. In addition, five days before reports surfaced last fall that Ross was connected to cronies of Vladimir Putin through a shipping firm called Navigator Holdings
,

Forbes concludes:
Quote:
Absurdly, maintaining all those conflicts of interest appears to be entirely legal—a reflection of ethics laws woefully unprepared for governing tycoons like Donald Trump and Wilbur Ross.
But they note that he lied in his a sworn statement to federal officials in November, when he claimed to have divested everything, but still had more than $10 million worth of stock in a financial firm that was his former employer.




Also, Trump's toadies are becoming more desperate in their excuses. After Laura Bush's editorial, they're now blaming Bush as well. At least, it's a novelty. Everything is usually former president Obama's fault:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... separation
Quote:
The Trump administration on Monday pushed back against criticism from former first lady Laura Bush of its “zero tolerance” policy that has led to the separation of migrant families.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen blamed past administrations, including George W. Bush’s, for signing off on laws that led to the current crisis. “Frankly, this law was actually signed into effect in 2008 under (Laura Bush’s) husband’s leadership, not under this administration,” Sanders said during Monday’s press briefing.

“We’re not the ones responsible for creating this problem. We’ve inherited it,” she added. “But we’re actually the first administration stepping up and trying to fix it.”
Rosalyn Carter has also issued a withering criticism of Trump's policy, so pretty soon they'll have to find a way to blame former president Carter.

(Melania Trump has said she "hates to see children separated from their families" but blaming legislators in both parties for not fixing immigration. It's a lie, of course, because Trump started this and could stop this with a phone call. )


http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... can-fix-it
Quote:
During a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing Room, [Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen argued that the growing crisis involving children is “not new” to the Trump administration and defended the treatment of children in detention....Nielsen added: “Congress and the courts created this system, and Congress alone can fix it.”

...The Homeland Security chief was peppered with questions during the briefing, which quickly grew heated, with some of her responses leaving reporters bewildered.

She claimed the separations were “not a policy” of the Trump administration, instead framing them as an unfortunate byproduct of the nation’s tangled immigration laws. Asked if the separations are intentional, Nielsen responded, “I find that offensive.”

That stance has been publicly contradicted by a number of top officials. White House chief of staff John John Kelly, who was Nielsen’s predecessor at DHS and remains a close ally, told NPR recently that the point of the separations are to prevent people from entering the country illegally.

...White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller also called the separations a “policy.” “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he told The New York Times. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

Before the briefing, members of the press shared an audio recording of young children crying for their parents at a detention center while DHS tried to get information from them.http://thehill.com/latino/392861-audio- ... ion-center They also played it when Nielsen claimed she hadn't heard it.


Ted Cruz has introduced his own legislation to stop family separation after Republicans have refused to sign on to the bill introduced by Democrats:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3928 ... t-families
But his bill requires that immigration judges settle cases within 14 days. With the backlog of cases, I'm sure he knows this is impossible.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Tue 19 Jun , 2018 12:55 pm
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... rms-652246
Quote:
Top aides to President Donald Trump are planning additional crackdowns on immigration before the November midterms, despite a growing backlash over the administration’s move to separate migrant children from parents at the border.

Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and a team of officials from the departments of Justice, Labor, Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget have been quietly meeting for months to find ways to use executive authority and under-the-radar rule changes to strengthen hard-line U.S. immigration policies, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House.

...Among the fresh ideas being circulated: tightening rules on student visas and exchange programs; limiting visas for temporary agricultural workers; making it harder for legal immigrants who have applied for welfare programs to obtain residency; and collecting biometric data from visitors from certain countries.

Details of the ideas are still being worked out, one White House official said.

In one of the most closely watched plans under discussion, DHS has proposed a new rule that former Obama administration officials and immigration advocates worry could be used as an end run around a 1997 court settlement that limits the time migrant children can be kept in government custody. Putting a formal government rule in place, lawyers and advocates say, could in effect supersede the settlement, allowing the administration to get rid of it altogether by dropping the rule a year or two later.
Note that these attacks include limiting visas for legal temporary workers and students, among other things.


https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/563123/
Quote:
Audio Recording: Hear the Voices of Children Detained at the Border
Quote:
The desperate sobbing of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents one day last week by immigration authorities at the border, makes for excruciating listening. Many of them sound like they’re crying so hard, they can barely breathe. They scream “Mami” and “Papá” over and over again, as if those are the only words they know. The baritone voice of a Border Patrol agent booms above the crying. “Well, we have an orchestra here,” he jokes. “What’s missing is a conductor.”

Then a distraught but determined 6-year-old Salvadoran girl pleads repeatedly for someone to call her aunt. Just one call, she begs anyone who will listen.

...In recent days, authorities on the border have begun allowing tightly-controlled tours of the facilities that are meant to put a humane face on the policy. But cameras are heavily restricted. And the children being held are not allowed to speak to journalists.

The audio obtained by ProPublica breaks that silence. It was recorded last week inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility. The person who made the recording asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. That person gave the audio to Jennifer Harbury, a well-known civil rights attorney who has lived and worked for four decades in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border with Mexico. Harbury provided it to ProPublica. She said the person who recorded it was a client who “heard the children’s weeping and crying, and was devastated by it.”

The person estimated that the children on the recording are between four and ten years old.
The Atlantic also talked to the aunt of the little girl. She is devastated but unable to pick up her niece because she and her daughter are also waiting for a decision and she's afraid of the Trump administration. The aunt and her niece have been allowed to speak on the phone. The little girl has not spoken with her mother.


https://www.vox.com/2018/6/18/17477376/ ... g-together
Quote:
Nationwide protests against Trump’s family separation policy planned for June 30
Progressive groups are organizing a rallies in Washington, DC, and other cities.
There are also various petitions on the internet, if you want to sign one. For instance, at the ACLU. The one from Families Belong Together is affiliated with a group I didn't recognize.



Another day, another Trump directive to amplify his trade wars:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/39290 ... tional-200
Quote:
President Trump on Monday said he is directing his top trade official to identify $200 billion more worth of Chinese goods that will be subject to tariffs, escalating the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and China.

Trump said Monday that China's decision to retaliate in kind against his first batch of $50 billion in tariffs — announced on Friday — required a U.S. response to encourage China to change its unfair practices. ...The president asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to find $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that would be hit with a 10 percent import tax.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/39282 ... ber-prices
Quote:
Homebuilder confidence fell in June behind spiking lumber prices because of an ongoing spat between the United States and Canada. Builder sentiment in the market for new single-family homes fell 2 points, to 68, on the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index released on Monday.

..."Builders are increasingly concerned that tariffs placed on Canadian lumber and other imported products are hurting housing affordability," said NAHB Chairman Randy Noel, a custom-home builder from LaPlace, La. "Record-high lumber prices have added nearly $9,000 to the price of a new single-family home since January 2017."

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3928 ... s-zte-deal
Quote:
The Senate moved to block President Trump's deal to save Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE despite pushback from the White House. Senators passed an annual defense policy bill on Monday that included a provision keeping in place the penalties against ZTE despite a deal reached earlier this month by the Trump administration.

...The provision — spearheaded by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — sparked backlash from the White House, which is signaling it will try to remove it from the final bill. “The Administration will work with Congress to ensure the final NDAA conference report respects the separation of powers.” said Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary for the White House.

From The Economist:
https://www.economist.com/united-states ... rica-first
Quote:
The rising cost of America First
Donald Trump wants a Trumpian foreign policy but will not want to pay for it
Quote:
WITH the ink still drying on the Singapore declaration, President Donald Trump was asked why the North Koreans were any likelier to honour its terms than all the previous nuclear agreements they have flouted. The difference, he said, was himself. “I don’t think they’ve ever had the confidence, frankly, in a president that they have right now.” It was a reminder that the only unifying principle in Mr Trump’s maverick foreign policy is his relentless eye for personal advantage.

...Whatever the merits of the ensuing detente, the tactic has paid off handsomely for the president. It has enabled him to create a semblance of historic progress, which has driven his supporters wild with glee and bookmakers to slash their odds against him bagging the Nobel peace prize. And in case the deal comes to nothing, he says he has a contingency plan. He will simply “find some kind of an excuse” to absolve himself of blame. This was so predictable it is amazing Mr Trump retains such power to shock. Almost all his disruptive foreign-policy moves, the rows with allies, withdrawals from international agreements, tariffs and threats of worse on every front, can be viewed primarily as tactical ploys intended to push his self-image as a decisive leader, honour ill-considered campaign pledges or stoke the partisan, nationalist and xenophobic sentiment from which he draws strength.
Quote:
By such means Mr Trump has been able to smash the maximum amount of crockery, for maximum political effect, at a modest or intangible cost. But he will now have fewer opportunities for low-cost bullying or audacious dealmaking available to him.

He has no more big Obama foreign achievements to unwind. The next wave of international entities in his sights—NAFTA, NATO and the United Nations—would be far more damaging to leave, politically and otherwise.



Kobach is back in the news over voter ID, but I'll bet he isn't happy about it:
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch ... ation-case
Quote:
A federal judge on Monday permanently struck down Kansas's proof-of-citizenship voter registration law, handing down a blistering ruling against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the country's most vocal advocates of voter-ID laws.

In the 118-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson wrote that the state’s requirement that voters show proof of citizenship during registration violated both the Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act.

Robinson struck down the stringent law, and ordered Kobach to take six additional hours of continuing legal education that “pertain to federal or Kansas civil rules of procedure or evidence.”



EDIT to add:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3929 ... s-together
Quote:
GOP Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) said on Tuesday that a group of GOP senators is drafting legislation that would prevent the separation of immigrant families at the U.S. border with Mexico. Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said the legislation is currently being crafted by a working group of GOP senators, but they are hoping to pitch the Senate GOP conference on the bill as early as the Tuesday policy lunch.

"The bottom line is that it would make sure families stay together through the entirety of the legal proceedings and make sure they get an expedited hearing in front of an immigration judge," Cornyn said.

...Senate Democrats have united behind a bill from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), but Republicans argue that bill is too broad and would result in the release of immigrants trying to enter the United States illegally.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is expected to introduce his own bill, while GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) said 40 senators approached him to discuss legislation during a Monday night vote series.

...But any legislation faces an uphill battle in the Senate. Getting a bill "hotlined" would require the consent of every senator, which could be a political impossibility on an issue as divisive as immigration.

Although both Democrats and Republicans have called for more immigration judges (and it's a key part of Ted Cruz's proposal), Trump refuses:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ve-to-have
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday pushed back against efforts to hire more immigration judges to address the influx of migrants arriving at the Mexico-U.S. border.

Trump spent much of his speech at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) railing against illegal immigration and emphasizing the need to close the southern border. During an aside on the need for border security, Trump declared judges are ineffective in combatting illegal immigration.

“Ultimately, we have to have a real border, not judges,” Trump said.

..."Seriously, what country does this? They said ‘sir, we’d like to hire 5,000 or 6,000 more judges,” Trump continued. “Now can you imagine the graft that must take place?”
Trump is really losing it with that last comment.



A number of state governors are withdrawing National Guard troops from the border (Trump demanded this until his border wall is built) or refusing to send them because the Trump administration is taking children from their parents.
http://thehill.com/latino/393008-republ ... ver-family
http://thehill.com/latino/392985-rhode- ... separation



Dear Leader is once again threatening to shut down the government if Congress doesn't give him his precious wall:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... ion-653530
Quote:
In a private meeting regarding the wall Monday, Trump fumed to senators and his own staff about the $1.6 billion the Senate is planning to send him this fall, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Trump wants the full $25 billion upfront and doesn’t understand why Congress is going to supply him funds in a piecemeal fashion — even though that’s how the spending process typically works.

...The president said at the meeting that if Congress doesn’t give him the resources he needs for border security, he will shut down the government in September,


The Hill's 12:30 report http://thehill.com/homenews/1230-report ... artini-day noted an interesting juxtaposition between a Fox news contributor's opinion followed by a Trump tweet later in the morning.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/39296 ... into-ms-13
Quote:
“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday said many immigrant children who come to America “turn into” members of the MS-13 gang [when he criticized people for being upset about the family separation policy].

...“these kids get fanned out to working-class neighborhoods into our society. And then they have to be paid for by English is a second language. And then they got to be schooled and a lot of them, sadly, in my neighborhood, turn into MS-13,” he added.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ur-country
Quote:
President Trump on Tuesday restated his support for his administration's policy of separating migrant families at the U.S. border, calling Democrats "the problem."

..."Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!" he continued in another tweet.
btw, does anyone actually believe that a highly paid Fox contributor lives in a gang-ridden neighborhood?



A couple of interesting items in a Politico story about Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's strong defense of the family separations yesterday:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... ion-653265
Quote:
White House chief of staff John Kelly advised Nielsen against doing the news conference, but she charged ahead anyway, according to a senior administration official.

...Nielsen’s sudden ownership of the administration’s most controversial domestic policy to date came after senior administration officials pushed her to get on message over the weekend. Last month, she said in her Senate testimony that she shares lawmakers’ concerns about the monitoring of unaccompanied children placed with other family members or guardians.

“We were all wondering where she was and how long it would be until she got that talk,” said one Trump ally. “Everyone knew that talk was coming.”
Quote:
Kelly’s status in the White House has changed in recent months, and he and the president are now seen as barely tolerating one another. According to four people close to Kelly, the former Marine general has largely yielded his role as the enforcer in the West Wing as his relationship with Trump has soured. While Kelly himself once believed he stood between Trump and chaos, he has told at least one person close to him that he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment — at least this chapter of American history would come to a close.
Another Trump administration official with no conscience defends the policy. He's the one in charge of the kids:
http://thehill.com/latino/393000-hhs-of ... nce-effect
Quote:
A top Trump administration official confirmed Tuesday that family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border will serve to deter future illegal immigration.

"We expect the new policy will result in a deterrence effect," said Steven Wagner, who is in charge of care centers for undocumented minors in federal care as the acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the Department of Health and Human Services.

One of the many civilized countries whose citizens are appalled at the U.S. :
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... ith-the-us
Quote:
A French government spokesman said Tuesday that the country does not “share certain values” with the Untied States as the Trump administration digs in on its policy of separating migrant families at the border.

...“We do not share the same model of civilization, clearly we don’t share certain values,” [spokesman Benjamin] Griveaux told French television. He added that images of children being detained inside warehouses and former big-box stores are “shocking.”


This seems oddly appropriate now. Why pretend our administration, whose head praises North Korea's dictator to the skies and incarcerates immigrant children separately from their parents, cares anything for human rights?:
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... ts-council
Quote:
The Trump administration is reportedly planning on withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley are scheduled to announce the withdrawal at 5 p.m., according to Bloomberg.



http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... rilling-in
Quote:
Department of the Interior officials say they are "disappointed" by a recent billboard ad campaign by environmentalist groups decrying uranium drilling near the Grand Canyon, saying the group is wasting its money.

Interior Spokeswoman Heather Swift on Tuesday tweeted that Secretary Ryan Zinke was "disappointed" in the groups' actions. ...Adding: "The Secretary has no intention to revisit uranium mining in and around the canyon and has made exactly zero moves to suggest otherwise."

...Conservation groups the Arizona Wildlife Federation and Trout Unlimited paid for the billboard ads that went up Monday protesting recent reports that the Interior Department is exploring re-opening the Grand Canyon and surrounding areas to uranium mining.


As some predicted, the GOP is using the excuse of the increasing national debt, accelerated by its recent tax cuts, to start destroying Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs:
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/39302 ... nding-cuts
Quote:
The House GOP budget proposal released Tuesday calls for a $5.4 trillion decrease in mandatory spending over a decade, including $537 billion in reductions to Medicare and $1.5 trillion in reductions to Medicaid and other health programs.

Another $2.6 trillion in reductions would come from other mandatory spending programs that include welfare and anti-poverty programs.

“Despite an extraordinary past and a booming economy thanks to tax reform, there are real fiscal challenges casting a shadow of doubt on the nation’s future, including $21 trillion of debt that is rapidly on the rise. We must overcome the challenges,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack (R-Ark.).

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 20 Jun , 2018 12:22 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
http://thehill.com/latino/393158-trump- ... xas-report
Quote:
The Trump administration is reportedly operating three "tender age" detainment facilities in Texas, where undocumented babies and toddlers are sent after being forcibly separated from their parents.

The Associated Press reports that at least three facilities housing hundreds of children are already operational in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville, Texas, while a fourth in Houston is being planned.
http://thehill.com/latino/393171-michig ... months-old
Quote:
Michigan's Department of Civil Rights says immigrant children as young as three months of age have arrived in the state for temporary foster care placement after being separated from their parents at the U.S. border.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Michigan Department of Civil Rights denounced the Trump administration's zero tolerance immigration policy, which has resulted in the separation of migrant parents and children. The statement also assured that the department was working to make sure children arriving in the state are well taken care of, are properly resettled and have their civil rights represented.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/i ... rents.html
Quote:
'I Can’t Go Without My Son,’ a Mother Pleaded as She Was Deported to Guatemala

As a growing number of families are separated as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to control illegal immigration, some parents are being deported before recovering their children.
Quote:
As the federal government continues to separate families as part of a stepped-up enforcement program against those who cross the border illegally, the authorities say that parents are not supposed to be deported without their children. But immigration lawyers say that has happened in several cases. And the separations can be traumatic for parents who now have no clear path to recovering their children.

http://thehill.com/latino/393114-trump- ... -immigrant
Quote:
The Trump administration is planning to pay a single nonprofit $458 million to house immigrant children detained after crossing the border.

The Texas nonprofit, Southwest Key Programs, operates a series of facilities housing detained migrant children, including a former WalMart in Texas that has become the focus of national attention amid the outcry over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -criticism
Quote:
President Trump issued praise for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Tuesday amid a storm of criticism surrounding the administration's "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration.

In a tweet, the president touted Nielsen's performance at Monday's White House press briefing, during which Nielsen fielded questions from reporters over whether DHS's treatment of detained children seeking asylum constitutes child abuse.

...."Homeland Security @SecNielsen did a fabulous job yesterday at the press conference explaining security at the border and for our country, while at the same time recommending changes to obsolete & nasty laws, which force family separation. We want “heart” and security in America!" Trump tweeted.

Another soulless bastard in the Trump administration blames the parents for having their kids taken from them:
http://thehill.com/latino/393113-ice-ch ... eparations
Quote:
The country's top immigration enforcement official said Tuesday that undocumented parents who enter the U.S. illegally are to blame if they're later separated from their children.

Speaking on CNN, Thomas Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), defended the Trump administration's policy of zero tolerance for illegal border crossings.
"The parents need to make a clear choice: Enter through a port of entry, you won't be separated," said Homan. "If anybody's to blame for that child being taken away, it's the parent that chose, 'I'm gonna break the law rather than go to a port of entry."
I don't have a report to link to at the moment, but there are reports that hundreds of people have been camped out in front of legal ports of entry for weeks, trying to do just that, but the Trump administration is refusing to process more than a handful of claims. And some reports claim that even some parents entering through those ports have had their children taken away.

Not to mention the nonsense of claiming that a poor family escaping violence in Honduras or El Salvador is going to be spending their evenings watching cable news and know this before they enter.Some of the kids who have been incarcerated don't even speak Spanish, much less English.

And this new policy has been going on for weeks (and to a lesser extent for months or longer?), but the Trump administration has been keeping it quiet until now, presumably to avoid the public relations nightmare it's now facing.


Edit: Mulvaney also lines up to be a loyal little Trump supporter too and show what he is. This guy is the budget director. He didn't have to speak up.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ditions-at
Quote:
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s controversial “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that has led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents. Mulvaney said Wednesday that the Trump administration was merely enforcing laws that apply to U.S. citizens and rejected claims that migrant children have been kept in cages and inhumane conditions.
btw, his statement also suggests he should go for an eye exam.



http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -with-down
Quote:
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Tuesday dismissed a story from a Democratic strategist who shared about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome being separated from her family while illegally entering the U.S.

“I read today about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother,” Zac Petkanas, who formerly served as the rapid response director for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said during an appearance on Fox News opposite Lewandowski.

Lewandowski interrupted, mockingly interjecting, “womp womp.”

Democrat Schumer is also contemptible:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3930 ... der-crisis
Quote:
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Tuesday dismissed a legislative proposal backed by Republican leaders to keep immigrant families together at the border, arguing that President Trump could fix the problem more easily with a flick of his pen.

“There are so many obstacles to legislation and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense,” Schumer told reporters. “Legislation is not the way to go here when it’s so easy for the president to sign it.”

Asked if that meant Democrats would not support a bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to keep immigrant families together while seeking asylum on the U.S. border, Schumer said they want to keep the focus on Trump. “Again, the president can change it with his pen,” he said, warning that Republicans would likely try to add poison-pill provisions to any immigration bill that came to the floor. “Unacceptable additions have bogged down every piece of legislation we’ve done,” he said.
Quite possibly he's right about the latter, but he's refusing to try for a bipartisan agreement, just to get political points.




More governors are withdrawing members of the National Guard from the border, or announcing that they will not send them in the future, in outrage over the family separations.
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch ... o-separate


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... nce-policy
Quote:
The American Medical Association (AMA) on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which has resulted in the separations of migrant families at the border.

And normally I wouldn't condone things like the following, but considering the language I used last night when a Trump spokesperson was on the radio (and normally I don't swear much, beyond the occasional "damn"), I can't throw stones. In fact, I think that at this point, the best thing for the decent people of this country to do would be to ostracize anyone who publicly defends this outrage. And hit the Trump dynasty the only place it hurts, in their wallets.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... at-mexican
Quote:
Liberal activists disrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night amid growing outcry over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.
(DHS tried to spin this as a positive thing today: http://thehill.com/latino/393172-dhs-pr ... ut-current
Quote:
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that the protesters who confronted DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Tuesday evening at a Washington, D.C. restaurant "share her concern" over the "current immigration laws" that have created a "crisis" on the southwest border.

“While having a work dinner tonight, the Secretary and her staff heard from a small group of protestors who share her concern with our current immigration laws that have created a crisis on our southern border,” DHS spokesperson Tyler Q. Houlton wrote on Twitter.

“.@SecNielsen encourages all - including this group - who want to see an immigration system that works, contributes to our economy, protects our security, & reflects our values reach out to Members & seek their support to close immigration loopholes that made our system a mess,” Houlton added

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... at-capitol
Quote:
A heckler hurled an expletive at President Trump as he arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday.“Mr. President, f--- you,” the person can be heard yelling in a clip shared by NBC's Frank Thorp V.

...According to an NBC News reporter, the woman who yelled the remark was a congressional intern.


However, things like this are more admirable
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/19/1747 ... -tolerance
Quote:
A Facebook fundraiser is set to raise $5 million in under five days in response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on immigration and the separation of thousands of children from their families at the border.

Charlotte and Dave Willner started their fundraising campaign after seeing the viral image of a two-year-old girl crying as her mother, an asylum seeker from Honduras, was being searched and detained at the US-Mexico border. The initial goal of $1,500 was meant to help cover bond fees for the one person, but it rapidly grew in scale.

Over 83,000 people have contributed to the cause on Facebook so far.

Another expression of anger:
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/39 ... s-with-ice
Quote:
Dozens of Microsoft employees are calling on the company to cut ties with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid growing outcry over the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

More than 100 employees signed on to an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, which was posted to an internal message board and obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday. “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” the letter reads. The letter demands that Microsoft end its $19 million contract with the agency to use the company’s Azure cloud product for sensitive data processing.
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/39 ... e-contract
Quote:
Microsoft executives are rushing to contain employee backlash over the company's contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/393170 ... -democrats
Quote:
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, one of the GOP's loudest critics of President Trump, renounced the party early Wednesday and announced that he will begin voting for Democrats.

... 29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2018

It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders.

,,,“This child separation policy is connected to the worst abuse of humanity in our history,” Schmidt wrote. “It is connected by the same evil that separated families during slavery and dislocated tribes and broke up Native American families. It is immoral and must be repudiated. Our country is in trouble. Our politics are badly broken.”

Oddly enough:
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/39316 ... ld-migrant
Quote:
Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham has not seen any of her advertisers publicly boycott her show despite a backlash on social media following a controversial comment she made about migrant shelters, according to a Tuesday evening report in the Hollywood Reporter.

Ingraham sparked controversy by calling housing for migrant children separated from their parents "essentially summer camps" during her Monday program.



btw, this is what Trump supporters actually care about, An FBI agent has been hounded out because he committed the cardinal sin of not supporting Trump - he exchanged anti-Trump comments on his work email during the presidential campaign, which made the department look bad after Republicans made a huge fuss over it. Sure, he should technically have used his personal email, but who hasn't said something personal to a colleague on a work email?

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... nal-review
Quote:
FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok was escorted from the building amid an internal review of his conduct, his lawyer confirmed Tuesday.

Strzok, who had a central role in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State, was reportedly escorted from the FBI building on Friday amid an internal review of his conduct.

"Pete has steadfastly played by the rules and respected the process, and yet he continues to be the target of unfounded personal attacks, political games and inappropriate information leaks," his attorney Aitan Goelman said in a statement Tuesday.

...Strzok became a target of President Trump and conservatives after it was discovered that he had exchanged private text messages with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that disparaged Trump and other political figures.
Note that Mueller already removed Strzok from the investigation of Trump, long ago, to avoid an appearance of impropriety, and the Inspector General report clearly said that his personal views of Trump did not influence his work.

But Trump has to get his revenge.




EDIT:
Had to share some quotes from this opinion piece, posted on The Hill, to show just how low Tump's defenders have sunk. I won't point out the obvious lies. Anyone with a brain knows that US administrations haven't been ripping children from their parents for 11 years. It's by this person:
Quote:
Jen Kerns has served as a GOP strategist and writer for the U.S. presidential debates for FOX News. She previously served as communications director and spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, the Colorado Recalls over gun control, and the Prop. 8 battle over marriage which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/ ... ading-into
Quote:
As the nation vigorously debates the fate of children detained at the southern U.S. border, it is no surprise that former first lady Laura Bush — a doting mother and grandmother — felt the need to wade into the national immigration debate.There is just one problem: The former librarian should have checked out a history book first. It was her own husband, President George W. Bush, who signed into law in 2008 a comprehensive immigration reform package including a policy pertaining to unaccompanied minors at the border. ...For the former first lady to critique the Trump administration over a policy that her husband approved is the epitome of hypocrisy.
Quote:
The internment camps of the 1940s were perpetrated against actual citizens of the United States, who were rounded up from their private homes, arrested, and thrown into concentration camps. Contrast this to the border crisis today which pertains to actors who aren’t citizens of this country
Quote:
Sadly, the Republican former first lady’s rhetoric is no different than the attempts by Democrats to suggest that today’s border crisis is just like the Jewish Holocaust and compare the Trump administration to Nazis in 1940s Germany. Never mind that the perpetrators of the referenced incidents were left-wing leaders — President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the case of U.S. internments, Adolf Hitler regarding the Holocaust

Last edited by aninkling on Wed 20 Jun , 2018 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 20 Jun , 2018 3:49 pm
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In other news:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06 ... nd-climate
Quote:
Marine conservation and addressing climate change are out. Jobs and national security are in. That’s just one message sent by a new executive order detailing a revised U.S. oceans policy released today by President Donald Trump. The order formally revokes the 2010 oceans policy issued by then-President Barack Obama, and replaces it with a markedly different template for what the government should focus on in managing the nation’s oceans, coastal waters, and Great Lakes.

...the Trump order stresses economic and security concerns. U.S. waters “are foundational to the economy, security, global competitiveness, and well-being of the United States,” the order begins. “Ocean industries employ millions of Americans and support a strong national economy. Domestic energy production from Federal waters strengthens the Nation's security and reduces reliance on imported energy.”

... It first calls for federal agencies to coordinate on providing “economic, security, and environmental benefits for present and future generations of Americans,” and then highlights the need to “promote the lawful use of the ocean by agencies, including [the] United States Armed Forces.” It also says the government should work to “facilitate the economic growth of coastal communities and promote ocean industries,” “advance ocean science and technology,” “enhance America's energy security,” and ensure that “Federal regulations and management decisions do not prevent productive and sustainable use of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes waters.”

The new order also largely downplays an Obama administration emphasis on creating robust data collections that could help managers make decisions, and on encouraging state and federal agencies to collaborate on plans that would guide marine development, conservation, and other activities
Or the short version: Drill, baby, drill.


https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/ ... ble-duluth
Quote:
President Donald Trump will meet with local mining industry representatives and elected leaders during a formal "roundtable" discussion before his campaign event Wednesday in Duluth, White House officials announced Monday. Trump will arrive in Duluth about two hours before the 6:30 p.m. campaign rally at Amsoil Arena. The roundtable event — featuring several local mining industry workers, company officials and local politicians — is set for an undisclosed location somewhere on the Duluth waterfront. It's expected to showcase how his trade and deregulation policies are affecting the region's mining industry.

...Jack said Monday the White House invited Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton to the event but that Dayton had a previously scheduled engagement. Dayton said last week he had not yet been asked to attend.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... t-negative
Quote:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross shorted stock in a navigation company after he learned that journalists were preparing to write a negative story about his ties to the Russian-linked company, Forbes first reported on Monday. The transaction took place last fall after The New York Times emailed Ross a list of questions about his investments in the shipping company Navigator Holdings after noticing his name listed in the Paradise Papers, the Times reported.

...On Tuesday, Ross put out a statement saying he had no nonpublic information about Navigator before he shorted the stock. He added that the reporter who contacted him was writing about his personal financial holdings and not about Navigator and thus the reporter’s questions were not “market-moving information.”

However, the Times said that the letter they sent Ross clearly said that “the story focuses mostly on your involvement with Navigator Holdings” and included ten questions specifically about Navigator, Ross’s connection to the firm and the company’s links to Russia.


Edit: It seems I'm not the only one thinking about ways to punish the Trumps economically over the family separation policy. Unlikely to succeed, but I can understand the impulse. Decent people are looking for ways to vent their fury at Dear Leader.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... grounds-of
Quote:
Religious leaders and former judges filed a complaint on Wednesday asking the Washington D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to revoke the Trump International Hotel’s liquor license because of President Trump’s character. The complaint argues that a D.C. liquor license can be suspended or revoked if the “true and actual owner" of an establishment is not a person of "good character."

http://thehill.com/policy/transportatio ... -on-family
Quote:
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday accused three airline carriers of "buckling to a false media narrative" over the recent separations of children from their families at the United States' southern border. DHS press secretary Tyler Q. Houlton issued a statement saying it's "unfortunate" that the three airlines "no longer want to partner with the brave men and women of DHS to protect the traveling public," adding that the carriers are "buckling to a false media narrative." "Despite being provided facts on this issue, these airlines clearly do not understand our immigration laws and the long-standing devastating loopholes that have caused the crisis at our southern border," Houlton said.

...American Airlines and United Airlines on Wednesday both they asked the government not to use their planes to transfer migrant children who had been separated from their families. Frontier Airlines said it would not "knowingly allow" the government to use its planes to transfer any of the children.
http://thehill.com/latino/393293-lawmak ... grant-kids
Quote:
Lawmakers are now banned from speaking with migrant children who are held at detention centers after being separated from their parents, according to a new Department of Heath and Human Services (HHS) directive sent to congressional offices on Wednesday.

The directive also states that lawmakers must give two weeks' notice before traveling to an immigrant detention center. They will be barred from entering if they do not give the advanced notice.
btw, Trump is now claiming that he's going to sign "something" to temporarily rescind the policy while Congress works on legislation. We'll see whether it happens, what it is, and what hidden gotchas are in there. At the moment, the news sounds more like DHS is digging in to resist any pressure from Congress and the public. "You can't speak to the children" is egregious. Then again, these are the same folks who told workers they couldn't pick up or hug the children in some facilities. Or at least hired companies that made this policy.





Officials in the U.K. are apparently planning to honor Trump by a visit with the queen. I read this morning that Theresa May says Trump's visit is still on.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... g-uk-visit
Quote:
President Trump plans to meet with Queen Elizabeth II during his trip to the United Kingdom next month, according to U.S. Ambassador to Britain Robert Wood Johnson.

Sky News reported Wednesday that plans have not been formalized, but Trump will likely meet with the monarch on July 13 at Windsor Castle. "Yes, I mean he has to see the head of state. Putting his foot on British soil, it's job one, it's very important, very symbolic," Johnson told the news outlet when asked if Trump would see the queen. "Meeting Her Majesty is the most important thing, because she's the head of state, and from then on, it'll be what the president wants to do,” Johnson added.


EDIT 2:

Well, here's Trump's executive order ending family separations, if you want to read it. I'll wait for the expert analyses, but I'm skeptical. He's not ending "zero tolerance" - which is what led to the family separation problem in the first place - and there seem to be several loopholes that would allow them to still take children from their families and incarcerate them separately.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... t-families
It contains this Trumpian dig at the judicial system and Congress: I"t is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law."

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Wed 20 Jun , 2018 11:56 pm
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Unfortunately, I may have been right.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ns/563303/
Quote:
Trump Says He Will End the Family Separations He Imposed
The president said he plans to sign an executive order keeping undocumented immigrant children with their parents, but the plan contradicts his earlier statement and might be illegal.
Quote:
Seeking to quell one of the most volatile political tempests of his stormy presidency, Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order he said was intended to end the separation of children from parents arrested illegally entering the United States by directing that youths be held with adults.

“We’re going to have strong borders but we’re going to keep the families together,” Trump said in brief remarks in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

The order keeps in place the “zero tolerance” policy for people crossing the border enacted last month. It appears first and foremost designed to quell a public uproar over the White House’s own policy choices. Whether it is feasible as policy, or materially changes conditions at the border, remains unknown.

...The directive raises a passel of new questions, and it’s not yet clear how it will function or what will change in practice. It appears likely that the order would violate a 1997 government agreement not to hold immigrant children, meaning that in the name of enforcing the law, the White House could be breaking it. Furthermore, the new order contradicts the president’s repeated claim that only Congress could fix the problem, and may paralyze efforts in Congress to end separations legislatively.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... her-for-up
Quote:
Senior Justice Department official Gene Hamilton confirmed on Wednesday that the government can only detain families together for “up to 20 days" after President Trump signed an executive order ending the separation of parents from their children at the border.

Hamilton said that the Flores settlement — a 1997 consent decree that prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention for more than 20 days — will stay in place unless Congress or the courts take action, CBS News’ Steven Portnoy reported. The Department of Justice is also asking a Federal District Court in California to extend the amount of time that the government can detain families for as long as their legal proceedings last.
The children who were already torn from their parents will not be reunited.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -separated
Quote:
There will be no special effort from the Trump administration to reunite migrant families separated at the border, according to a report from The New York Times, despite President Trump signing an executive order halting the practice.

The Times cites a Health and Human Services (HHS) Department official as saying that the children will not immediately be reunited with their families while their parents are detained throughout their immigration proceedings.

“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” Kenneth Wolfe, spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, part of HHS, told The Times.
So it sounds like it could be mostly smoke and mirrors, to get us all to shut up and go away. I had the feeling this might be in store, after DHS sent members of Congress the policy change saying they would not be allowed to visit without 2 weeks notice and can't talk to the children even if they do (how is this even legal?)


Which makes this article even more relevant. What else are the shelters hiding?
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/arch ... cy/563294/
Quote:
The Exceptional Cruelty of a No-Hugging Policy

When kids separated from their families on the U.S.-Mexico border can’t get hugs or physical comfort from the caretakers at their shelters—or even from one another—their experience becomes even more traumatic.
Quote:
Ever since the Trump administration’s recent statement that it had separated nearly 2,000 children from parents facing charges of illegally crossing the border—a number since raised to more than 2,300—troubling reports from inside the shelters where those children have been detained have proliferated. Many describe conditions in which, whether by official policy or not, shelter staff are prohibited or prevented from hugging or touching the detained kids—hundreds of whom are younger than 13 years old—to comfort them. Some testimonies, like the one from a former Tucson, Arizona, shelter worker, Antar Davidson (who quit last week because the shelter “didn’t have the trained staffing to handle the influx of younger, more traumatized children”), allege that even siblings in the shelters are prevented from hugging one another:

The breaking point for Davidson came, he says, when he was asked to tell two siblings, ages 6 and 10, that they couldn’t hug each other. “They called me over the radio. And they wanted to translate to these kids that the rule of the shelter is that they are not allowed to hug,” he says. “And these are kids that had just been separated from their mom—basically just huddling and hugging each other in a desperate attempt to remain together.”

And it gets worse
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ren-at-the
Quote:
A lawsuit made public on Wednesday alleges that immigrant children held at a detention center near Houston were forcibly administered drugs.

Immigrant children at Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor that houses unaccompanied migrant kids, were held down and told they would not be able to see their parents unless they took the psychiatric drugs, according to documents filed April in U.S. District Court in California.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Thu 21 Jun , 2018 1:37 pm
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Bloomberg also analyzes Trump's executive order. Like The Atlantic, it suggests the situation is murky and celebrations are premature:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... doesn-t-do
Quote:
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end his policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents -- but its true impact will largely depend on how Congress and the courts respond to it.

...The main driver of the surge in family separations -- Trump’s own “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all who cross the border illegally -- is not mentioned in the order. The president said he plans to continue it.

...In the executive order, Trump instructs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “promptly” request a modification of the Flores agreement in court. The Trump administration has also encouraged Congress to overturn or modify the agreement, to allow the government to detain family units together for more than 20 days. ..Hamilton did not say what the Trump administration would do if it is unable to win the court case.

Calling the court challenge a “stop gap” measure, Hamilton said Congress would have to act as the ultimate arbiter. The title of Trump’s order -- “Executive Order Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation”--gives a sense of its true objective.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ok-for-fix
Quote:
President Donald Trump’s sudden reversal on his policy to split undocumented families at the U.S.-Mexico border temporarily eased pressure on Congress to act on a politically volatile issue, but puts lawmakers no closer to a permanent fix. There is little dispute, however, that representatives and senators need to act.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican leader, said Trump’s order could be rejected by the courts or subject to a lawsuit, so a legislative response would ensure that families remain intact.

...It was increasingly clear, though, that a speedy resolution from the House and Senate was unlikely.

For anyone who needs a good summary of the issues (Flores, etc). It also gives the accurate statistics about the supposed "flood" of immigrants (the Trump admin was cherry-picking stats):
https://www.economist.com/democracy-in- ... eparations
Quote:
Mr Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy, which instigated the fiasco, aimed to prosecute all illegal immigrants on arrival and refer them to the criminal-justice system. Past administrations have typically restricted criminal proceedings to a narrower group: repeat immigration offenders, suspected smugglers and child-abusers. In those cases, children would be separated from their accompanying adults. First-time offenders were typically referred to civil judicial procedures. Mr Sessions declared: “Our goal is to prosecute every case that is brought to us.” That had not yet been fully implemented. If it had been, the number of family separations would double, the chief of the Border Patrol’s busiest station told the Washington Post. It is entirely within Mr Sessions’s prosecutorial discretion to try every illegal immigrant possible, but it is certainly not required by the law.

Ms Nielsen insisted that the festering crisis of family separation was “the exclusive product of loopholes in our federal immigration laws” that “create a functionally open border”. There are two controlling decisions for how to treat children who are detained by immigration authorities—neither of which requires family separation.

The first is the Flores settlement, a court-ordered decree which requires unaccompanied minors to be placed in the “least-restrictive setting” and released “without unnecessary delay”...

Do military lawyers have the training to judge immigration law? I truly don't know whether they do, though I have misgivings.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ion-crimes
Quote:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly asked the Pentagon to provide military lawyers to help prosecute illegal immigration cases along the southern border. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Wednesday night that the DOJ requested active-duty Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) be dispatched to border states to assist with the influx of illegal immigration cases.

Maddow said the JAGs will serve six-month shifts as special assistant U.S. attorneys in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. The Defense Department has agreed to the request, Maddow reported.


http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... mare-water
Quote:
A federal health agency released Wednesday a draft study that a White House aide previously warned could be a “public relations nightmare” for the Trump administration.

The study from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found that exposure to two key drinking water contaminants could be harmful at levels seven- to 10-times lower than what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had previously estimated in a health warning.


Trump says we need fewer government workers - unless it's a new military branch he wants:
http://thehill.com/regulation/pending-r ... tion-labor
Quote:
The White House will recommend merging the Departments of Education and Labor as part of an overall reorganization of the federal government, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The proposed merger, which is expected to be unveiled Thursday morning, would mark a significant step toward the Trump administration's goal of decreasing the federal workforce. The Education Department, which has already shrunk under the Trump administration, employs around 3,900 people, making it one of the smallest federal agencies.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/39331 ... pace-force
Quote:
Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday said President’s Trump’s recent direction to establish a “space force” will require work with Congress that has not yet started. “This as you know is going to require legislation and a lot of detailed planning and we’ve not yet begun,” Mattis told reporters outside the Pentagon prior to meeting with his German counterpart.

...Trump on Monday surprised military officials when he announced that he's directing the Pentagon to create a “Space Force” as its sixth military service branch.

...Wilson, Goldfein and Mattis last year all opposed a separate space branch when the issue came up in Congress. The officials said such a move would create additional, unneeded bureaucracy.


https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... ng-markets
Quote:
America’s trade spats are rattling markets
Quote:
Leaders in America and China now face a standoff that is likely to leave both sides worse off. The Trump administration, which has in recent days referred to China as a “predatory economic government”, reckons that it has the upper hand. In 2017 China exported over $500bn worth of goods to America, nearly four times as much as the $130bn it imported from there. Mr Trump and his advisers believe they can use this $375bn Chinese trade surplus as leverage in trade negotiations. Officials in China, meanwhile, who have called Mr Trump’s tariffs an act of “blackmail”, could retaliate in other ways. Many American-based multinational companies have invested heavily in China, and depend on it for their supply chains. The Chinese government could easily disrupt their operations, or restrict the sale of goods on which American firms depend. It could also try to drive up interest rates on the United States’ government debt by selling part of its stash of Treasury bonds.

Trump continues to try to destroy the media's reputation unless it provides him favorable coverage:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... treasonous
Quote:
President Trump said during a new interview that media coverage of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “almost treasonous.”

“First of all, we came to a wonderful agreement, it’s a shame the fake news covers it the way they do,” Trump told Mike Huckabee on the former Arkansas governor's TBN show. “It’s almost treasonous, you want to know the truth.”

Does anyone else feel like the avid Trump supporters resemble a cult these days?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... rips-media
Quote:
The crowd at President Trump's Wednesday campaign rally in Duluth, Minn., erupted into chants of "CNN sucks" after the president ripped the news media. "So we've created 3.4 million new jobs since Election Day," Trump told the crowd of supporters. "And I've said before if I would have said that to you during the campaign, those very dishonest people back there, the fake news. Very dishonest," he continued to boos from the crowd.

"They would have said he's exaggerating," Trump said to chants of "CNN sucks."


Trump's attacks on lawmakers are not as popular with the GOP as he claims:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... kers-booed
Quote:
President Trump on Wednesday claimed his most recent attacks on Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) at a closed-door meeting with Sanford's colleagues were well received;..."Had a great meeting with the House GOP last night at the Capitol. They applauded and laughed loudly when I mentioned my experience with Mark Sanford. I have never been a fan of his!" Trump tweeted.

...The comments were met with boos and and grumbles, according to sources in the room. I was very upset. It was very unnecessary and as far as I’m concerned, it was very rude,” Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said. “To make light of Mark Sanford is very unacceptable." Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) called Trump's barb a "classless cheap shot" in a tweet after the meeting. On Wednesday, Amash disputed Trump's account of the meeting, saying "nobody applauded or laughed."


Trump's buddy Kobach defies the court order:
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch ... -was-ruled
Quote:
Kansas officials are continuing to enforce a proof of citizenship law that a federal judge recently deemed unconstitutional.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Wednesday that staff for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has directed county clerks to continue requiring voters to present documentary proof of citizenship.


Edit: The children who were already taken might be reunited with their parents. I assume they're worried about the public reaction if they don't:
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/s ... -separated
Quote:
Top congressional Democrats are demanding President Trump begin reuniting immigrant families who were separated under the administration's "zero tolerance" policy. .."It seems that the administration lacks a plan, intention, and a sense of urgency to begin reuniting these children — many of whom have suffered serious emotional anguish — with their parents," the two Democratic leaders wrote in their letter.

“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” Kenneth Wolfe, spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), part of HHS, told the Times [on Wednesday].

But a spokesman for the ACF walked back comments those comments late Wednesday. "An ACF spokesperson misspoke earlier regarding the Executive Order signed today by the President. It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter," the department's communications director, Brian Marriott, said in a statement.

And the first epidemic might already have reared its head. I won't be surprised if there are more, especially among the children. When you stick a bunch of massively stressed out kids from different areas and backgrounds and unknown vaccination history, in a detention center, it's a perfect breeding ground for epidemics. Even if you vaccinate them on entry, that vaccine will need some time to get an immune response going. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... hicken-pox
Quote:
An immigrant detained at a federal prison complex in California has been diagnosed with chickenpox. The facility in Victorville said in a statement to NBC News that officials have isolated the detainee and are "taking the necessary precautionary measures to protect staff, inmates and the community from the possibility of being exposed to this virus."

According to the network, the detainee is just one of nearly 1,000 undocumented immigrants transferred to the facility as illegal border crossings reportedly surge. A local union official, John Kostelnik, told NBC News that the facility began accepting detainees earlier this month, even though it is understaffed.
Note also that people whose only crime was crossing the border and applying for asylum are now in a federal prison complex. With real criminals convicted of real crimes.

This is what happens when you have an impatient president and no planning or facilities for carrying out his "zero tolerance" detentions humanely.


The recent events have focused attention on the groups running children's facilities:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/m ... ssing.html
Quote:
The Billion-Dollar, Secretive Business of Operating Shelters for Migrant Children
Quote:
If there is a migrant-shelter hub in America, then it is perhaps in the four-county Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, where about a dozen shelters occupy former stores, schools and medical centers. They are some of the region’s biggest employers, though what happens inside is often highly confidential: One group has employees sign nondisclosure agreements, more a fixture of the high-stakes corporate world than of nonprofit child-care centers

..A small network of private prison companies already is operating family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania, and those facilities are likely to expand under the new presidential directive, should it stand up to legal review, analysts said.

...The range of contractors working in the migrant-shelter industry varies widely.

BCFS, a global network of nonprofit groups, has received at least $179 million in federal contracts since 2015 under the government’s so-called unaccompanied alien children program, designed to handle migrant youths who arrive in the country without a parent or other family member. Many of the contractors, some of which are religiously affiliated organizations and emergency-management agencies such as Catholic Charities, see their work as humanitarian aid to some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

But several large defense contractors and security firms are also building a presence in the system, including General Dynamics, the global aerospace and defense company, and MVM Inc., which until 2008 contracted with the government to supply guards in Iraq.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 22 Jun , 2018 12:56 pm
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It looks like the Trump administration is thinking about possibly using those loopholes in the executive order in the future:
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/39356 ... ume-family
Quote:
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Thursday said that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has privately told lawmakers that the Trump administration's family separation practice could resume despite the president signing an executive order to end the practice.

In a tweet, the California Democrat wrote that he was urging members of the House Appropriations Committee to ensure that no funding would be made available if the policy is restarted.

From The New Yorker,
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... tive-order
Quote:
Trump’s Executive Order Creates a New Border Crisis

Not all family separations can be undone, even if the President agrees to try—and the haste and carelessness with which the children were taken away will make the process all the more daunting.
Quote:
How will the Administration insure that kids who have been separated get swiftly reunited with their parents? And what legal fate will meet those kids whose mothers and fathers cannot be located, long after the news crews pack up their bags?

The case of an eight-year-old child named Pedro offers an unsettling preview. An indigenous boy from Guatemala, Pedro was among the first immigrant children to be taken from a parent under the Trump Administration, in an early round of separations that began many months ago, largely outside of public view. His legal circumstances are a crystal ball, of sorts, into the challenges that lay ahead for the more than twenty-five hundred immigrant kids who’ve recently faced family separations. Many of these children may be placed with sponsors and put into removal proceedings well before they locate their parents—if they’re able to do so at all.

...Faced with the boy’s imminent deportation, Pedro’s aunt sought help from Americans for Immigrant Justice. For months, Pedro’s legal team, along with his aunt, searched without success for his father. Had he been deported? Was he in detention? Had some harm befallen him? After all these months, no one knows.
btw, who came up with the utter lunacy of breaking up a family and having its members face separate immigration hearings?

I've also read that the Mexican government is already working to try to reunite parents and children of their own nationals (that's apparently a tiny fraction of them - most come from other countries). Ridiculous that a foreign government is doing more than the US, which created the situation in the first place. Humanitarian groups in the US are also trying to match parents with their children.


Another New Yorker story, about the detention facilities for children and the many issues the Trump administration created by taking very young children and babies from their families:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... n-its-care
Quote:
But the end of the family-separation policy does nothing to address or resolve the situation of the thousands of children who have already entered government custody....

In the past, “there have been really small numbers of tender-age children that came into O.R.R. care—minuscule,” Bob Carey, who served as a director of the O.R.R. under President Obama, told me. “Usually, if they came in, they were in the company of an older sibling, or a pregnant teen in O.R.R. care gave birth, and then the child was with his or her mother, not unaccompanied.”
Quote:
“There are certainly shelters that have been designed with nurseries and cribs, and have extra staff members who meet special licensing requirements,” a former H.H.S official told me. “But that’s not the majority of the system. Most shelters are designed for teen-agers, boys in particular.”
Quote:
Cost is another major problem. “It takes time to develop capacity, and it takes a lot of money as well. And, when you’re developing care capacity on an emergency basis, it’s very, very expensive to do,” Carey said.
Quote:
“In the Obama Administration, time in O.R.R. care was approximately a month, on average. We worried a lot about variations of a few days. There have been reports that stays are closer to two months now,”

An emergency physician's account of an encounter with a traumatized 8 year old recommended for psychiatric evaluation and the 4 callous men - including an armed police officer - guarding him:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told- ... -detention

A quote from her story below: (the whole thing is worth reading, to get a feel for the secretiveness and callousness of his supposed "clinician" (the physician says he was definitely not a doctor, in spite of calling himself a name which implies that)
Quote:
“This boy seemed devastated—quiet and withdrawn. He barely spoke. I asked if he needed a hug. I kneeled down in front of the recliner, and this kid just threw himself into my arms and didn’t let go. He cried and I cried. And to think he’s been in a facility for a month without a hug, away from his parents, and scared, and not knowing when he’ll see them again or if he’ll see them again. While I held him, I heard the men standing behind me muttering that I was ‘rewarding his bad behavior.’



http://thehill.com/homenews/news/393540 ... -protected
Quote:
A Canadian company is looking to begin mining in land that was previously protected as part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.

President Clinton established the monument in 1996, but in December President Trump cut the 1.87 million-acre site nearly in half, removing many of the federal protections.

Glacier Lake Resources Inc., a copper and silver mining firm based in Vancouver, announced its acquisition of the Colt Mesa deposit last week in a press release, saying that the area “recently became open for staking and exploration after a 21 year period moratorium.”

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/39 ... sts-report
Quote:
The Trump administration is directing federal scientists in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to get approval from the Department of the Interior, its parent agency, before speaking to reporters, according to the Los Angeles Times.

USGS employees interviewed by the L.A. Times said the policy is a departure from decades of past media practices that allowed scientists to quickly respond to media requests. The employees said that the new policy will significantly undermine this.

...Deputy press secretary for the Department of the Interior, Faith Vander Voort, told the outlet that Interior had only asked the USGS public affairs office to follow 2012 media guidelines established under former President Obama.


Turkey's hitting back at Trump's trade war too.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/39354 ... ry-tariffs
Quote:
Turkey on Thursday hit back at the United States with steep tariffs on $1.8 billion of goods for President Trump's duties on steel and aluminum imports that went into effect in March. The tariffs amount to $266.5 million on products from rice to tobacco and autos, paper and coal, according to the World Trade Organization.

The additional retaliatory tariffs range between 5 and 40 percent and are set to start on Thursday.
http://thehill.com/policy/transportatio ... opean-cars
Quote:
Based on the Tariffs and Trade Barriers long placed on the U.S. and it great companies and workers by the European Union, if these Tariffs and Barriers are not soon broken down and removed, we will be placing a 20% Tariff on all of their cars coming into the U.S. Build them here!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2018

The threat, which the president has suggested before, illustrates the escalating rhetoric in Trump's approach to international trade.

...Gary Cohn, Trump’s former top economic advisor said last week the president had expressed an interest in only having cars in the U.S. that were made here.
As Tillerson and Kelly said previously about Trump: "Moron." If he did even the most basic reading, he's realize this isn't even feasible.



Trump is getting a summit with Putin:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... tin-summit
Quote:
National security adviser John Bolton will visit Moscow this month, the latest sign a summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the works. Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for Bolton, said Thursday the top national security aide will visit the Russian capital “to discuss a potential meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin.”
So maybe Trump will get to sit down next to Putin and ask him those dumb questions he claimed he couldn't ask because Putin isn't part of the G-7 any more. I wonder if these meetings will also be very private, like Trump's other meetings with Putin last year at various international events.



http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ion-report
Quote:
President Trump’s trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate have cost taxpayers nearly $20 million for Coast Guard protection since he took office, USA Today reported. Records obtained by the newspaper show more than $1 million for Coast Guard protection alone was shelled out for each of Trump’s trips to the Florida property. The president has spent 69 days of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago, according to a NBC News tracker.

Incidentally, Trump's indefinite detentions of families seeking asylum is apparently also going to cost us a fortune. I read somewhere that the Obama administration did it much more cheaply by releasing families with electronic monitoring bracelets and a law adviser contact, and they had something like 99% of them show up for their immigration hearing. Though that's hearsay from a messageboard and I don't have a source right now.



Our daily lunacy:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... news-media
Quote:
President Trump said on Thursday that first lady Melania Trump's eye-catching jacket with the words “I really don’t care. Do U?" that she before and after a trip to Texas to visit with migrant children, was a reference to the news media.

... “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!
This whole fuss has been silly to me, though someone on her staff should really have suggested that she pick a different jacket, knowing how public figures are scrutinized. But for Dear Leader to now claim that it's a statement about the "fake" media? That idiot never knows when to shut up if he can't say something sensible.

I did admire Melania Trump for apparently just telling her husband that she was going to visit a detention center (based on the report I saw, she wasn't clearing it with him or his advisers, she just said "I'm going"). And for asking the right question when she got there, "how can I help you reunite the families?"



FYI:
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch ... ckpoint-in
Quote:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents held a surprise checkpoint on an interstate in Maine on Wednesday, questioning drivers about their citizenship status. Drivers on Interstate 95 were stopped by agents and not allowed to continue until they answered questions about their citizenship, the Bangor Daily News reported.

“If you want to continue down the road, then yes ma’am. We need to know what citizen — what country you’re a citizen of,” an agent said Wednesday, according to the newspaper.
I don't know whether these checkpoints continued under Obama, but I did get caught in one on the interstate in upstate New York under Bush. They shut down the entire southbound highway at a light travel time. If I remember right, it involved a police officer who looked like he'd much rather be doing something else and a couple of very young military with rifles who made me tense. Not that the soldiers did anything, but any time you have military harassing civilians, it makes me tense, because it reminds me too much of the Soviets behind the former Iron Curtain. And very young guys with rifles, a rigid look on their faces and no supervision also make me tense, because I worry about their judgement.

It's a Department of Homeland Security/ TSA thing - they are allowed to set up these checkpoints any place within 100 miles of the US border. That includes borders with the ocean and I've heard stories of checkpoints on roads on the East Coast in the past, far from Canada or Mexico.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: You've been Trumped!
Posted: Fri 22 Jun , 2018 5:55 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri 10 Aug , 2012 4:42 pm
 
More news today.

The Atlantic had a round-up of recent news about corruption in the Trump administration, including the Wilbur Ross story and a new story about Zinke.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... tt/563441/


This led me to two other stories worth reading in full:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... ighting-it
Quote:
Trump’s Pick to Lead Weather Agency Spent 30 Years Fighting It
A high-pressure lobbying system raises the question: Who owns the weather?
Quote:
In 2005 a representative of AccuWeather, the commercial forecasting company, visited the office of then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. ... his visitor had a gripe about the National Weather Service. The NWS was giving away forecasts on its website, radio stations, and elsewhere, when businesses such as AccuWeather charged its clients for theirs—never mind that AccuWeather relied on the service’s free data to formulate its own predictions. Santorum agreed that commercial weather companies deserved protection. That year he introduced a bill calling for the NWS to issue forecasts via “data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers.” Critics said the NWS would have been barred from making any public predictions beyond severe storm warnings, which private forecasters didn’t want to be responsible for. Bob Ryan, a veteran TV meteorologist, says, “A lot of people were very concerned. They said, ‘AccuWeather wants to take over the weather service.’ ” The legislation died in committee.

...After the bill’s collapse, Barry, now AccuWeather’s chief executive officer, took a more conciliatory approach,... Yet he remains a champion of limiting the agency’s public role, opposing its use of social media to spread warnings. “We fear that he wants to turn the weather service into a taxpayer-funded subsidiary of AccuWeather,” says Richard Hirn, attorney for the National Weather Service Employees Organization.

Myers may soon be in a position to do that. In October 2017, President Trump nominated him to be NOAA’s administrator. In December the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees the NWS, approved him on a party-line vote.
No wonder it took Trump so long to nominate someone to head NOAA. I'll bet you have to search long and hard to find a person who wants to destroy that agency.


https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/ ... ana-647731
Quote:
A foundation established by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and headed by his wife is playing a key role in a real-estate deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil-services giant that stands to benefit from any of the Interior Department’s decisions to open public lands for oil exploration or change standards for drilling.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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