board77

Good for him! Succinct and to the point.

The request for party affiliation is so incredibly blatant.


At this point, I think more than half the states are pushing back. But it could turn into a fight. Kobach seems to be threatening to get the Justice Dept (i.e., Sessions) involved.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... a-request/

Quote:

Kobach told the Kansas City Star that while his commission does not have the authority to compel states to hand over the data, he believes the U.S. Justice Department does have that power. He said he couldn't say whether the Justice Department would be involved in the commission's data request at a later date.

And Trump has added another person to the election commission - Hans von Spakovsky - who resembles Kobach in his views. I assume this is so Trump's lackeys will outnumber the reasonable people.


It sounds like Trump may be letting the former Breitbart staffers (Miller and I assume Bannon as well) call the shots at the State Department.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ent-report

Quote:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pushed for maintaining autonomy over his department after senior White House aide Stephen Miller suggested last week that the department be tougher on immigration and make changes to their programs, Politico reports. Tillerson made it “quite clear” to Miller that he wanted autonomy over the State Department, according to one of four people familiar with the conversation in the West Wing,

Miller has been holding meetings with senators recently in an effort to crack down on immigration into the U.S., two administration officials told Politico.

...Tillerson has become frustrated with receiving instruction on how to run the department from younger, less experienced officials and Trump aides,

A CNN report Friday said that the White House was considering a memo proposing to move the State Department’s bureaus of Consular Affairs and Population, Refugees and Migration to the Department of Homeland Security.

Considering their inexperience and worldviews, that makes this editorial even more worrisome (long article, but it covers a lot of regions and issues):
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/26/th ... -it-looks/

Quote:

I’m normally leery of the pervasive threat inflation that tends to dominate discussions of foreign policy. Because the United States is so strong and in such a favorable geopolitical location, pundits and policymakers have to pretend the sky is falling to justify bigger military budgets and convince the public to keep meddling in distant lands. ...

Right now, however, we’re at a moment when I think genuine concern is warranted. This is not to say that we’re on the brink of a major war, let alone a global clash of great powers. But flammable material is accumulating and it is hard to have high confidence in the political leadership in several key countries (including here in the United States).

Quote:

But the United States is determined not to be beaten in this competition of political incompetence. If the consequences were not potentially so dire, the Trump administration’s collective ineptitude would be a great source of comic relief. I’m not talking about controversial policy decisions about which reasonable people might disagree (such as the pros and cons of giving regional military commanders greater authority over operations in their respective areas), I’m talking about foreign-policy actions that seem inspired more by the Keystone Cops or Three Stooges than by Clausewitz, Kennan, or Sun Tzu.

Indeed, only six months into Trump’s presidency, it’s becoming hard to keep track of all the squirm-inducing moments. [long list of blunders] ... And then there’s Trump’s weird decision to gut the State Department (apparently with the full support of his secretary of state) and to assign sensitive diplomatic tasks to his son-in-law, despite the latter’s complete lack of foreign-policy experience and checkered business career.

Republican and Democratic legislators also seem to be worried.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/34033 ... ift-in-gop

Quote:

No one was more surprised than Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) on Thursday when her language revoking the administration's war authority was unexpectedly backed by Republicans and added to a must-pass defense spending bill.

I'm not going to bother posting anything about Trump's ongoing tweets about the media. There's really not much point in paying any attention to his childish outbursts and tantrums.

Edits (formatting)

Yeah, the tweets are symptomatic but we already know the diagnosis.

He's an ass?

Actually, let me amend that to ignorant, egotistical ass.

aninkling wrote:

Actually, let me amend that to ignorant, egotistical ass.

There are many more adjectives you could add in there.

Yeah, but my fingers would get cramps if I tried to type them all.

Although a Watergate reporter might have summed it all up in one word:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... presidency

Quote:

Journalism legend Carl Bernstein on President Trump: "We have never been in a malignant presidency like this before"

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ps-conduct

Quote:

A top Justice Department official who serves as a corporate compliance watchdog has left her job, saying she felt she could no longer force companies to comply with the government's ethics laws when members of the administration she works for have conducted themselves in a manner that she claims would not be not tolerated.

...Chen said management in her office tried to silence her from publicly speaking out against the White House.

Trump's plan to start drilling the Atlantic, the Arctic have begun:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... lling-plan

Quote:

The Interior Department on Monday began accepting public comments on a new five-year offshore drilling plan, an early step toward rewriting the blueprint for drilling in federal waters.

... Trump in April ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reconsider the five-year offshore drilling plan instituted by President Obama last year. Interior said it will implement that plan, which limits lease sales to the Gulf of Mexico and waters off of south-central Alaska, while reviewing and eventually rewriting it.

Interior has also proposed allowing seismic testing for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean, the first step toward potential drilling in the area.

The Pacific coast is not included for now.



Information on how to comment on the proposed rule is here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... ontinental

Quote:

Internet comments should be submitted via the Federal internet commenting system at http://www.regulations.gov. BOEM requests that commenters follow these instructions to submit their comments via this Web site:

(1) In the search tab on the main page, search for BOEM-2017-0050.

(2) Locate the document, then click the “Submit a Comment” link either on the Search Results page or the Document Details page. This will display the Web comment form.

btw, other proposed rules are here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/

including Trump's proposal to gut some of our national monuments:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... ic-comment


Just in:
Court rules that Trump administration doesn't get to delay an EPA rule - and it warned them that they're probably not going to get away with it on others, either.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... ution-rule

Quote:

The Trump administration cannot delay an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule limiting methane pollution from oil and natural gas drilling, a federal court ruled Monday. In an early court loss for President Trump’s aggressive agenda of environmental deregulation, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the EPA didn’t meet the requirements for a two-year stay of the Obama administration’s methane rule.

...The decision could spell trouble for the Trump administration, which is working to dismantle nearly all of former President Barack Obama’s major environmental rules. In many cases, Trump officials are unilaterally delaying regulations such as the EPA’s rules on ozone pollution, safety plans for chemical plants and methane pollution from landfills.

But the D.C. court, the main court for hearing challenges to regulatory decisions, warned the administration that it would take a hard look at such delays and would allow them to proceed only if they are specifically required under the law.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... oter-fraud

Quote:

Luis Borunda, Maryland's deputy Secretary of State, has resigned from President Trump's controversial panel that is looking into possible voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election, the Baltimore Sun reported Monday.

....The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity — formed by President Trump to investigate his widely debunked claim that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in November's election — sent letters last week to the 50 secretaries of state across the country requesting information about voters.

Yet more states have recently said "no" to Kobach's request, including Maryland.


btw, Rolling Stone has an older article on Kobach's Crosscheck program, which might be of interest:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/fe ... rs-w435890

Quote:

On its surface, Crosscheck seems quite reasonable. Twenty-eight participating states share their voter lists and, in the name of dispassionate, race-blind Big Data, seek to ensure the rolls are up to date. To make sure the system finds suspect voters, Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.

In reality, however, there have been signs that the program doesn't operate as advertised. Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."


...We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

Quote:

Kobach refused to speak for this story. So I went to Newton, Kansas, where he was headlining an ice-cream-social fundraiser in a public park. I approached Kobach with the Crosscheck list he had refused me, and asked, "Why are these lists so secret?""They aren't," Kobach answered, contradicting what his attorney had told me. I pointed to a random match on the Crosscheck list and asked him why it identified James Evans Johnson as the same voter as James P. Johnson.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... h-act-with

Quote:

A legal group filed a complaint Monday asking the Justice Department to investigate whether Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of President Trump's voter fraud panel, violated federal law when his 2018 campaign for Kansas governor highlighted his role on the commission.
The complaint by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law points to multiple alleged violations under the Hatch Act, a law enacted in 1939 that prevents government employees from giving an outright endorsement to political candidates.

Surprise, surprise - Trump is spending the 4th of July at one of his golf clubs.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -golf-club

Quote:

President Trump is spending part of his Fourth of July holiday at his golf club in Virginia, making it his 36th day at a golf course as president. It's also his 50th visit to a Trump-owned venue in 165 days.

...During the campaign, Trump said that Americans should vote for him because he would rarely leave Washington, and he often faulted President Obama for his own frequent trips to the links.

I'm half surprised he's not spending it with his buddy Chris Christie on the public beach Christie has turned into a private retreat for the 4th.


Fortune tries to estimate the cost of Trump's pleasure jaunts to taxpayers.
http://fortune.com/2017/05/08/donald-tr ... ity-costs/

Quote:

But the White House makes it hard for taxpayers to know anything about the costs. Trump and his aides are mum when asked for an accounting. Past attempts by government auditors to gauge the costs of presidential travel have been sketchy, fragmentary and outdated.

Quote:

Flying to either Florida or New Jersey for the weekend is a president's personal choice, but spending weekends away from the round-the-clock security of the White House adds to the cost to taxpayers. It costs roughly $200,000 an hour to fly Air Force One, the modified Boeing 747 that the president typically travels on. There's also the cost of flying the presidential limousine or SUV to Trump's destination ahead of time so he can be whisked away when he lands.

Quote:

The mayor of Bedminster said a weekend trip there by Trump when he was still the president-elect cost nearly $4,000 in police overtime. With heightened security requirements now that Trump is president, Bedminster has estimated that it could spend $12,000 per day on his visits, and up to $300,000 over the course of the summer....

Palm Beach County, Florida, spends more than $60,000 a day when the president visits, mostly for law enforcement overtime.

A $1 trillion spending bill Trump signed Friday while in Bedminster includes $61 million to reimburse law enforcement agencies for the costs of protecting Trump and his family when they are at his private properties in New York and Florida.

Trump arrives in Poland today. The Polish government has promised him a warm welcome, even though it has to bus in people to cheer him.

posting.php?mode=reply&f=2&t=6719

Quote:

The Polish government is planning to bus lawmakers from its conservative ruling party and pro-government activists to Warsaw for President Trump’s speech to the Polish people, according to The Associated Press, which cites Polish media reports.

...Polish media reports say the government promised the U.S. president that he would receive a warm welcome, complete with cheering crowds, during his visit, according to The Associated Press.

Ugh, that reminds me so much of the types of crowds manufactured to cheer dictators. But Poland wants things from the U.S. and that seems to be the way to get them from Trump.


Is anyone surprised by the following ?
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ouse-staff

Quote:

The gender pay gap for White House staffers is three times larger under the Trump administration than it was during President Obama's last year in office, according to a think tank’s analysis. Conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Monday found that since Trump took office, female staffers are making a median of $72,650 while male staffers earn a median of $115,000.

...Perry found that nearly 74 percent of the top 23 Trump staffers are male, compared to 52 percent under Obama.

Zinke seems to be hoping that he can get some members of the public to support drilling the Atlantic and Arctic by promising to use some of those funds to support national parks. This is, of course, to help make up for the deficit from the money Trump wants to slash from the parks in the first place.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... -for-parks

Quote:

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said that he wants the federal government to increase its income from offshore oil and natural gas drilling to pay for budget gaps in national parks.

Zinke told reporters Wednesday that new royalty and fee payments from drilling can go a long way toward solving the more than $11 billion maintenance backlog at the National Park Service (NPS), and the $360 million the Trump administration is proposing to slash from the agency’s annual budget.

I'm pretty sure this is a cynical political ploy. This administration has shown no desire to fund national parks or public spaces, but to slash their funding and open them to mining and drilling instead. I expect the promised funds would mysteriously evaporate once the oil companies do get to put their drilling rigs along the Atlantic coast and the Arctic.


btw, Trump and Zinke are already planning to allow companies to conduct seismic tests in the Atlantic.
http://www.pressherald.com/2017/06/05/t ... -drilling/

Quote:

The National Marine Fisheries Service said Monday it is seeking permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act for five companies to use air guns for seismic surveys in the mid-Atlantic, from Delaware to central Florida.

The air guns are so loud they can disturb, injure or even kill whales, sea turtles and other marine life. Environmental groups and many East Coast lawmakers oppose the surveys, complaining that air-gun noise can injure marine mammals and harm commercial fishing and tourism.

The oil and gas industry has pushed for the surveys, which would map potential drilling sites from Delaware to central Florida.

https://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2017/07/0 ... ina-coast/

Quote:

Unlikely bedfellows rally to oppose seismic air gun testing, offshore drilling near the North Carolina coast

Quote:

The ramifications for marine life are dire. “Many ocean animals, particularly marine mammals such as whales, rely for their very existence on their ability to use sound,” testified Duke University scientist and professor Douglas Nowacek before a U.S. House subcommittee. “For these animals, sound is central to their ability to find food, to locate other animals, to avoid predators, to reproduce, and thus to survive.”

Seismic testing is only the first step in a process that could forever alter the environment of the North Carolina coast. Under the Obama administration, offshore drilling could occur no closer than 50 miles from the Atlantic Coast. But under President Trump, that distance has been reduced to just three miles. Oil rigs would be well within view of the Carolina beaches and fisheries, drawing any environmental and economic damage even closer to the coast.

Public comments on the seismic testing are due by midnight on Thursday, July 6:

Quote:

Written comments should be addressed to Jolie Harrison, Chief, Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service. Comments can be sent to via email to ITP.Laws@noaa.gov or through the mail to 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

Edit - deleted a seismic testing permit proposal for Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida - I missed the date on that one, and it was already past (Obama administration, 2015)

Also, marine sanctuaries and marine national monuments are now under attack. (California, Michigan, Hawaii, Atlantic Ocean, Marianas Trench - see notice for details.) Public comment instructions and information here:

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D= ... -0066-0001

Quote:

This Notice document was issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Notice; request for public comments.

Pursuant to Executive Order 13795—Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy, signed on April 28, 2017, the Department of Commerce is conducting a review of all designations and expansions of National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments since April 28, 2007. The Secretary of Commerce will use the review to inform the preparation of a report under Executive Order 13795, Sec. 4(b)(ii). This Notice identifies 11 National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments subject to the review and invites comments to inform the review.

http://thehill.com/regulation/other/340 ... olated-law

Quote:

President Trump’s voter fraud commission may have violated the law by ignoring federal requirements governing requests for information from states, several experts on the regulatory process told The Hill.

Experts say the failure to submit the request to states through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) violates a 1980 law known as the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). They also say the failure could be significant, since states could argue it means they are under no obligation to respond.

...After an initial version of this story was published online, the White House in an email argued that the election commission is exempt from the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires federal agencies to take specific steps before making requests for public information. The reason is simple, according to a spokesman: The commission is not an agency.

[However] The Paperwork Reduction Act defines “agency” very broadly and exempts only requests for information from the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Election Commission from having to follow the requirements of the law. So the voter commission and the type of information it is requesting would be covered.

I also read that Kobach is claiming that the coverage of the denials is "fake news" and almost all of the states have agreed to respond because they've said they'll send him what is available to any member of the public (provided they'll pay). It seems he has a problem with reading comprehension if he doesn't understand the accompanying comments by the various states. Go jump in the Gulf of Mexico is particularly unambiguous.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/ ... -fake-news
I'm starting to think that anyone who uses the term "fake news" about mainstream news sources should automatically be barred from public office.


On the other hand, this is supposedly one of Trump's favorite stations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... story.html

Quote:

One America News is an obscure TV channel struggling to emerge from the cellar of the cable ratings, but it is nonetheless one of President Trump’s favorite media outlets. It’s not hard to see why: On One America newscasts, the Trump administration is a juggernaut of progress, a shining success with a daily drumbeat of achievements.

... But since its inception in 2013, and especially since Trump began his march to the White House, One America’s owner, Robert Herring Sr., a millionaire who made his money printing circuit boards, has directed his channel to push Trump’s candidacy, scuttle stories about police shootings, encourage antiabortion stories, minimize coverage of Russian aggression, and steer away from the new president’s troubles, according to more than a dozen current and former producers, writers and anchors, as well as internal emails from Herring and his top news executives.

From The Altlantic,

Quote:

Why Fact-Checking Doesn't Faze Trump Fans

The president’s backers aren’t impervious to reality: Confronted with untruths, they concede he was wrong, but don’t waver in their support for him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... rs/532701/

Quote:

The era of Donald Trump has brought with it what one might view as either a golden moment or a dark age for fact-checking. The president’s extremely loose regard for the truth, even for a politician, has produced a surfeit of fresh grist to verify—or more often, debunk. Yet it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference. Trump’s approval rating is in the basement, but it’s his inability to get anything done and his legal troubles that seem to be hurting him; his dishonesty was already manifest during the campaign. If the bleaker view is right, then truth is a casualty of the age, and stories like David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson’s exhaustive inventory of Trump’s lies (their word) are little more than exercises in liberal and anti-Trump catharsis.

Edit:
btw, the public comment period for allowing oil companies to do seismic testing in the Atlantic has been extended by 15 days, according to this article in The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ns/532683/
Also, there are some bills to encourage, if you'd like to oppose the blasting.

Quote:

The pushback from Congress has been similarly un-polarized. Don Beyer, a Democratic representative from Virginia, and Republican Frank LoBiondo from New Jersey recently introduced a bill to the House that would ban seismic testing. (A similar Democrat-led bill has been introduced in the Senate.) And last week, Beyer, together with Republican John Rutherford from Florida, sent a letter to Zinke “urging an immediate halt to the permitting process.” It was signed by a bipartisan group of 103 representatives. “The Republicans on the letter aren’t a bunch of back-benchers no one’s ever heard of,” Beyer says. “It’s been really encouraging that a lot of them have lined up with us. The science keeps helping us


...Zinke’s office did not return a request for comment, but has previously stated that BOEM “employs mitigation measures and safeguards to reduce or eliminate impacts to marine life.” Those measures, according to Knapp, involve putting a guy on deck with binoculars to watch for nearby whales and dolphins. “When you say it, people laugh, it’s so insufficient,” he says. It also doesn’t consider the impact on smaller organisms like fish and plankton.

So far 44 states have refused to comply with the request for voter information. Of course, this will allow Trump to continue to push the narrative of having won the popular vote ("I tried to have an honest investigation into it, but the states refused to cooperate. What are they hiding???")

Trump will spout off his nonsense and lies, no matter what anyone finds. And no one but die-hard Trump supporters are likely to believe that he won the popular vote, too. Or care.

I think the broader danger is that the commission will try to eliminate legitimate voters by methods like Kobach's flawed CrossCheck program. And the evidence suggests that this will disproportionately affect people likely to vote Democrat.

What seems to be another resignation over Trump's lack of ethics:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... mp-resigns

Quote:

Walter Shaub, the leader of the federal government’s ethics office who previously criticized President Trump over the president's business interests, submitted his resignation on Thursday. He will leave office nearly six months before the end of his term.

Shaub will officially step down from the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on July 19, according to a letter to Trump that Shaub posted on his Twitter account. The letter was a veiled shot at the Trump administration, which has routinely clashed with the small independent agency over the appearances of conflicts of interest.

...Schaub has served in OGE under both Republican and Democratic presidents, starting his tenure during the George W. Bush administration.

The report also details instances where Schaub called out the Trump administration for ethics violations.


Trump's meeting with Putin will be very private:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... in-meeting

Quote:

Only six people will be in the room for President Trump’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, Axios reported Thursday.The six will be Trump, Putin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and two translators, the report said.

...Top Trump aides are reportedly worried about what Trump will say during the meeting.

Let me guess - the two translators will be chosen by Putin?

Tillerson received the Order of Friendship from Putin in 2013, BTW.

I'm not sure what to think of Tillerson. News of him hasn't been impressive, but then again, many people misjudged a former science adviser to a past president for not doing more, when he was quietly doing what he could to mitigate damage behind the scenes.

Some seem to be more concerned that Putin and Lavrov will run rings around Trump and Tillerson, neither of which has any experience with diplomacy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... n-meeting/


Potential trade war over steel, which could be significant:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/at ... story.html

Quote:

Leaders of the European Union warned sharply on Friday that President Trump risks a trade war if he imposes restrictions on steel imports, a mark of deep divisions as a summit of leaders of major world economies got underway. In one of the most consequential decisions of his young administration, Trump could within days impose new restrictions, a decision that could impact trade with more than a dozen major countries.

... Typically, officials at G-20 summits work hard to coalesce around an agreement — even a tepid one — but the meeting so far has exposed numerous divisions between countries on climate, national security and economic policy.

...The Trump administration has blamed China for what it says is a “global overcapacity” of steel, essentially arguing that the Chinese government is subsidizing the steel industry and allowing its producers to create and export so much steel that it drives down prices and makes it difficult for U.S. producers to compete.

But any U.S. restriction on steel imports would have a relatively muted effect on China, and would hit other countries much harder. The largest exporters of steel to the United States are Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, according to IHS Global Trade Atlas. Germany also has a large steel industry, and German officials have been particularly concerned about what a unilateral move to impose restrictions on steel imports to the United States might mean.

And Trump is being his usual diplomatic, cultured self at this meeting:

Quote:

In a Twitter post on Friday, Trump wrote of the G-20 that “I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares!”

As he entered the meetings Friday morning, he strode up to Merkel, smiling, then shook her hand vigorously. Walking away, he looked toward reporters and pumped his fist in the air.

The new head of the CDC seems to be a reasonable choice. As with any Trump appointee, there are worries about her putting right wing ideology over science, but she seems well qualified and this history gives no sign that she will.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to- ... -director/

Quote:

The Trump administration has named Georgia Public Health Commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the most crucial public health positions in the U.S. government given the agency's role in tracking and stopping infectious disease outbreaks nationally and globally.

Fitzgerald, 70, an obstetrician-gynecologist who has headed that state's public health department since 2011, will succeed Tom Frieden. He stepped down in January after serving for eight years, longer than any director since the 1970s. Anne Schuchat, a veteran CDC official, has been serving as acting director.

...On hot-button issues such as abortion, she condemned graphic antiabortion ads aired by her GOP opponent in her first bid for elected office, saying the government had no business dictating abortion policy.

An analysis comparing Trump's Poland speech (written by former Breitbart staffer Miller) to former presidents was fairly interesting:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ch/532839/

Quote:

How American Presidents Used to Speak Overseas

Is America an idea? Or is it a specific “people” or ethnic group? On the diverging answers to that question turn some of the biggest disputes in U.S. history. Our current president began his trip to Europe with a speech in Poland that minimized the role of ideals in American identity, and maximized the importance of what he called “civilization” but which boils down to ties of ethnicity and blood.

The pipeline politics Trump stumbled into, with his remarks in Poland:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/06/tr ... nitiative/

Quote:

During a lightning visit to Poland, Trump gave public backing to a new, 12-country plan to tie together Central-Eastern Europe, framing his support as a ploy to counter the Kremlin’s penchant for using supplies of natural gas as a cudgel against its neighbors. “America will be your strongest ally and steadfast partner in this truly historic initiative,” he proclaimed. The so-called “Three Seas Initiative” (TSI), dreamed up last year by Poland with an assist from Croatia, aims to take advantage of the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas to break Central-Eastern Europe’s isolation, especially on matters of transport and energy.

...Trump likes the idea because he thinks it’s an opportunity to sell more liquified natural gas, or LNG, from America’s shale patch.

... More troubling, some say, is Trump’s willingness to support the year-old TSI, which reanimates an almost century-old semi-authoritarian plan to unite the people caught between Germany and Russia under Polish leadership.

... What Trump’s backing might do, Buras notes, is “encourage the Polish government to politicize” the Three Seas Initiative. The plan isn’t just about breaking free from Russia’s energy orbit; it’s “also about trying to push Germany away from this part of Europe or at least to form a certain counterweight to Germany,” Buras says. And the current Polish government, lead by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) Party, sees itself as the vanguard of any such regional counterweight.

...But the Kremlin also has an interest in seeing the Three Seas Initiative widen the divide between Poland, its Central-East European neighbors, Germany, and the rest of the EU.

This is why it's better to let the diplomats get involved than to just go with your gut feeling as a businessman.



Edit:
News emerging about Trump-Putin meeting:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -two-hours

Quote:

President Trump's bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin ran for more than two hours Friday, far longer than the 30 minutes it had been scheduled for.

We're probably never going to know what went on, because:
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... aks-report

Quote:

President Trump's team at the G-20 insisted on limiting the number of people present at his Friday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid leaks and multiple accounts of the event, according to the New York Times.

In other words, last time we found out that he had revealed information to the Russians that would let them identify a highly placed Israeli spy.

It seems to me that, if you've been accused of collusion with the Russians, a closed, private meeting with Putin that went on for 2 hours would not be in your best interests...

Tillerson said that Trump told Putin that Congress is considering new sanctions against Russia. Trump claims he didn't tell Putin about that.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... d-they-did

Quote:

“Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!” Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

...Tillerson, however, told reporters Friday that Trump told Putin that U.S. lawmakers were pushing for new sanctions on Russia, according to the Washington Post. “But the two presidents, I think, rightly focused on: How do we move forward?” Tillerson said.

Well, we know which one of these two habitually lies.


Unbelievable. Trump wants to form a cybersecurity unit with Russia.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3411 ... ith-russia

Quote:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) early Sunday criticized the notion that President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could work together to form an "impenetrable Cyber Security unit."

..."Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit.' We have no quarrel with Russia or the Russian people. Problem is with Putin & his oppression, war crimes & interference in our elections."

....Trump tweeted earlier that he and Putin discussed during their meeting forming an "impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded...and safe."

More news about meetings between Trump team and people who have ties to Russia:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ear-report

Quote:

President Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr. arranged a meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin at Trump Tower two weeks after his father clinched the Republican presidential nomination, The New York Times reported Saturday. The meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was reportedly also attended by Trump's then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who now serves as a senior White House adviser.

Representatives for Kushner and Trump Jr. confirmed the meeting with Veselnitskaya. The Russian lawyer is known for working against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists Russians suspected of violating human rights.

Quote:

Trump Jr. said that the meeting focused primarily on an adoption program involving Russia.

It looks like damage control has already begun:

Quote:

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump's outside counsel, issued a statement late Saturday implying that the meeting was a setup. He said the Russian lawyer and her translator "misrepresented who they were."

Recent activities suggest Trump wants to refill Guantanamo:
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/34105 ... guantanamo

Quote:

The Trump administration appears to be making its first moves toward fulfilling a campaign promise to fill the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with “bad dudes.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the prison on Friday to get an update on current operations, the first concrete action the administration has taken on the facility since taking office.

...Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, various draft executive orders floated around Washington that would have moved to fulfill Trump campaign promise to begin sending new prisoners to the facility. The orders would have revoked Obama’s executive order and suspended any existing transfer efforts pending a new review. They also would have called for the continued operation of Guantanamo to hold and try members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces,” including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

But no such orders have been signed.

....The Justice Department framed Sessions and Rosenstein’s visit as a way to get updated on how the facility is working.

The Atlantic has more information about the meetings between Trump's son, Kushner, Manafort and the Russian lawyer. It seems Trump Jr lied in his first statement that it was about adoptions (which was pretty unbelievable to start with). The New York Times broke the stories, but The Atlantic can be read freely.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ing/533061

Quote:

Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign after she promised him damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the president’s eldest son said in a statement Sunday, shedding new light contacts between Trump’s innermost circle and Russian figures last year.

...Sunday’s revelation is the most concrete evidence yet that President Trump’s campaign was receptive to foreign assistance to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid during the 2016 campaign. It came one day after the Times reported Donald Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya for the first time. In a statement provided for that article, he told the Times the meeting focused on Russian adoptions and the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan act of Congress that sanctioned top Russian officials for human-rights abuses in 2012.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... awyer-this

Quote:

An ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush blasted Donald Trump Jr. for meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the campaign, saying it “borders on treason.” “This was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians, who were known to be engaged in spying inside the United States,” Richard Painter said Sunday on MSNBC.

It looks like Trump and supporters are claiming that Comey's memos contained classified information. I saw the first story on The Hill, but when I went looking for a reputable news organization to back it up (Reuters, etc.), Google just came up with a bunch of conspiracy sites and Breitbart News (so far).
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... classified

Quote:

More than half of the memos former FBI chief James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.

...Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two documents he created might have been contained classified information.

“I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the one memo he later leaked about former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

... But when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents.

...he testified that he has since turned them over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief and now spearheading the investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Congressional investigators had already begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared.

As far as I can tell, the gist of it seems to be that the personal memos Comey kept may have contained classified information, but there's no evidence that he leaked it. And Congressional investigators (I assume this means the Republicans who support Trump) are investigating whether it was legal for Comey to make and keep those private memos. They also seem to be hoping that federal FBI rules make it illegal for him to have leaked his conversations with the president to the public.

To me, this looks like an attempt at a distraction.


This is what the Washington Post had to say.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... formation/

Quote:

President Trump accused former FBI director James B. Comey of illegally leaking classified information to the media, part of an angry, early morning tweet storm Monday as the president faces new allegations about his 2016 campaign's contact with the Russians.

...The president also used Twitter to push out several a “Fox & Friends” clips Monday morning, including one accusing Comey of having his friend leak top secret information, and another accusing the media of not representing half of the country.

Trump's plan to form a joint cybersecurity unit with Russia and share information is providing as many memorable quotes as the responses to his election commission's request for private information. For instance:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3411 ... orts-since
Senator John McCain:
"I'm sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort since he is doing the hacking."


A proposed bill would let state governments veto including a species as threatened or endangered - which would probably mean that some states would refuse to list any species that a powerful business interest didn't like. It looks like endangered species would also be automatically be delisted after 5 years. With a normal Congress and President, I'd think this bill has a snowball's chance in hell of leaving the committee, but given all the talk of "fixing" the Endangered Species Act these days, I thought it worth mentioning.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-con ... 5/all-info

Quote:

Amends the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) to require the consent of the governor of a state in which a species is present for: (1) a determination of endangered or threatened species status by regulation, and (2) listing of the species as endangered or threatened by the Department of the Interior upon a determination by the Department of Commerce.

....Subjects determinations by Interior and Commerce to list species as endangered or threatened to congressional approval by joint resolution. Requires removal of each species listed on an approved list five years after the joint resolution is enacted. Provides a procedure for re-submission by Interior, in consultation with the governor of each state in which the endangered or threatened species is present, of a list including a species so removed and subjects that list to approval by joint resolution.

...Establishes a process for exclusive state regulation of endangered or threatened species determined by a state governor to be present only within that state. Precludes judicial review of any such action. Subjects the following to the process of intrastate regulation: (1) issuance of species conservation regulations, (2) recovery plan implementation, (3) species recovery monitoring, and (4) establishment of agency guidelines.

I'm not even sure that prohibiting the courts from reviewing a government action is even legal.


Edit: fixed one word ("memos: for emails. I had emails on the brain, since some Republicans were likening Comey's memos to Hillary Clinton's emails.)

btw, I did a quick google search on John Solomon, the author of the "Comey memos contained classified information" piece on The Hill, since it doesn't give any affiliation there. The first John Solomon that comes up is a reporter with Circa news. He seems to be a controversial figure:
http://thehill.com/homenews/324589-news ... a-coverage

Quote:

Circa News, a millennial-focused media outlet that launched only eight months ago, has been embraced by Republicans for aggressive reporting on Russian meddling in the 2016 election that runs counter to reporting in more mainstream outlets.

...Circa’s Chief Operating Officer John Solomon and national security reporter Sara Carter have appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” almost every night for the past week, giving the outlet a valuable primetime perch on one of conservative media’s most-watched cable news shows.

And from the Columbia Law Review
http://archives.cjr.org/feature/something_fishy.php

Quote:

Then again, Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his storyline. As a reporter for the AP and The Washington Post, he dug up his share of genuine dirt, but he also was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.

In our area, it looks like the "support Trump" people are in overdrive. I went for an early morning bike ride and a handful of houses were so plastered in American flags, they could have supplied an entire parade.


Edit: The New Yorker has a solid piece summarizing what we know so far about Trump's Russia ties, and what it may (or may not) mean. The Wall Street Journal apparently broke some new information, last week, about Russian hackers discussing how to get Clinton's emails and get the material to Flynn.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... ian-lawyer

Quote:

The Truth Behind Donald Trump Jr's Meeting with a Russian Lawyer

In the increasingly bizarre news about Trump, his son has released an email chain setting up the meeting with the Russian lawyer:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ve/533235/

Quote:

Donald Trump Jr. was told a “Russian government lawyer” wanted to convey information to him that was damaging to Hillary Clinton, because the Russian government wished to aid the presidential campaign of Donald Trump Sr. “If it’s what you say I love it,” he responded, and met with her on June 9, 2016.

That’s according to documents released by the president’s eldest son on Twitter on Tuesday. The documents (more easily viewed here) fully vindicate a series of New York Times articles in the preceding three days, and contradict Trump Jr.’s previous statements.

... the emails make clear that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a White House senior adviser, and Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chairman, were both copied in, meaning they too would have been aware of the purpose of the meeting and of Veselnitskaya’s identity. Kushner failed to disclose the June 9 meeting when applying for security clearance, but more recently did disclose it, as did Manafort.

And yet Kushner still has his security clearance... This is an awfully memorable thing to have "forgotten" to disclose.



The lawyer's story about the meeting is different than Trump, Jr's:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... rmation-on

Quote:

“I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton," Natalia Veselnitskaya told NBC News. "It was never my intention to have that."

During the interview,Veselnitskaya was pressed on why Trump Jr. appeared to have the impression she had information about the DNC. “It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information," she said. "They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

Al Gore was once sent compromising information on Bush.He turned it over to the FBI:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Quote:

Despite what Trump apologists may say, it is not normal practice for a campaign to welcome information undermining an opponent, regardless of the source. In 2000, the Al Gore campaign was anonymously sent briefing books and a video that George W. Bush had used to prepare for an upcoming debate. Gore campaign officials immediately turned the material over to the FBI — which opened a criminal investigation.

In other news, some Tea Party Republicans want to give Trump his wall or shut down the government over the budget. One also claims Trump will veto any budget that doesn't include his wall:
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/34138 ... down-fight

Quote:

Two House conservatives on Monday warned that the government could shut down if a spending bill does not include money to fund President Trump’s wall along the Mexican border. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, even said he believed that Trump would veto a spending measure that did not include money for the wall.

...Earlier on Monday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) vowed to “fight every spending bill that doesn’t fund that wall” in a new advertisement for his Senate campaign. “And if I have to filibuster on the Senate floor, I’ll even read the King James Bible until the wall is funded,” Brooks said in the ad. Brooks threatened to go up against GOP colleagues who block funding for the border wall.

...Trump and high-ranking members of his administration ... have said that a shutdown could be productive.

...Republicans have been divided over Trump’s demand for a wall, with some members from border states in the House and Senate questioning the wisdom of the president’s signature campaign promise.

And Trump is adding more people to his voter election commission:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... commission

Quote:

Christian Adams of Virginia and Alan Lamar King of Alabama will join the 15-member commission that Trump created by executive order in May to investigate his claims of voter fraud in last year’s presidential election.

...Adams worked at the Department of Justice in the George W. Bush administration and wrote a book, titled "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department," and has previously claimed that immigrants in the country illegally registered to vote. He is a columnist for the conservative site PJ Media.

King is a probate judge in Alabama.

Also, Blackwater is back in the news, and presenting ideas to Steve Bannon:
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/34138 ... m-military

Quote:

Blackwater Worldwide founder Erik Prince and DynCorp owner Stephen Feinberg have floated proposals to use contractors instead of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. According to the Times report, they have presented their alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan to chief strategist Stephen Bannon and senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.Bannon reportedly sought a meeting this weekend with Defense Secretary James Mattis at the Pentagon in hopes of discussing the outside ideas.

(Mattis doesn't seem to have been very interested in their ideas.)