President Trump’s first 100 days so far: 4 false/misleading claims per day, 6 of 60 promises kept

The following post is from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker email of February 24, 2017:

This week, we launched a new Fact Checker project: 100 days of Trump claims. Every day for the first 100 days of the new presidency, we will keep track of false or misleading claims made by the new president.

Trump is a unique politician in terms of the volume and frequency of false or misleading claims he makes. Moreover, he often repeats the same debunked claims even though they have been fact-checked. So far, Trump has said something misleading or false every day of his presidency. Continue reading “President Trump’s first 100 days so far: 4 false/misleading claims per day, 6 of 60 promises kept”

If Melania Trump Isn’t In Business, Why Are Her Companies Still Active?

The following article by Kevin G. Hall of the McClatchy Washington Bureau was posted on the National Memo website February 23, 2017:

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

First lady Melania Trump has several companies that are still active enterprises, raising questions about whether they will be used for profit while she is in the White House.

Beyond the 564 companies listed in then-candidate Donald Trump’s May 2016 financial disclosure were seven companies associated with his wife.

All but one of her companies had been listed in the disclosure as active, and five of the seven were still active as of Feb. 21. The one Melania Trump company he listed last year as having inactive assets — Melania LLC — appears to be an ongoing and active company in the records of the New York State Division of Corporations. Continue reading “If Melania Trump Isn’t In Business, Why Are Her Companies Still Active?”

Trump is cooking the books of the American economy

The following article by Bryce Covert was posted on the ThinkProgress site February 21, 2017:

Rather than fix the problems the economy has, the administration is trying to get the numbers it wants.

President Trump arriving at the White House on Monday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

President Trump won the White House talking about the ills of the economy and how he would fix them. But to fix what’s broken, first you need to measure where things stand. So far, it appears that the Trump administration is manipulating official data to paint the picture it wants, rather than the way things actually are.

All presidents release their own economic growth forecasts as part of the budget process. That process is currently underway in the Trump administration, and the forecasts are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Many presidents seek to make the numbers look as positive as possible. But according to sources who spoke with the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the Trump administration is going much further. It told White House economic advisers to start with a GDP growth target of between 3 and 3.5 percent a year for the next decade and then backfill numbers in their models to make that prediction work. Continue reading “Trump is cooking the books of the American economy”

Priebus says 80 percent of Americans support Trump’s initiatives. Sure — if all Americans are Republicans.

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website February 23, 2017:

Up until November, Reince Priebus was the head of the Republican Party, tasked with getting Republicans elected and representing the party’s interests publicly. He was good at that job, and with the election of a Republican president to join GOP control of Capitol Hill, he was ready for a new adventure. When President-elect Donald Trump reached out about serving as his chief of staff, Priebus agreed — and took on a new constituency, the American people at large.

He may be getting that new constituency confused with his old one, if a comment he made at the Conservative Political Action Conference is any guide. Continue reading “Priebus says 80 percent of Americans support Trump’s initiatives. Sure — if all Americans are Republicans.”

Parents of Minn. transgender children find some hope in reassurance from Dayton, school officials

The following article by Ricardo Lopez and Liz Sawyer was posted on the Star Tribune website February 23, 2017:

Gov. Mark Dayton and Minnesota school officials moved quickly Thursday to reassure transgender students and their families after President Donald Trump withdrew a federal directive meant to protect them in schools, giving some hope to parents like Alison Yocom who are worried for their children.

“We were scrambling and trying to figure out what to say to our kids,” said Yocom of Minneapolis, mother to George, a 13-year-old transgender boy. In contact with other parents through the support group Transforming Families, Yocom said some of their kids were afraid to go to school on Thursday.

“Kids’ lives are at stake,” Yocom said. Continue reading “Parents of Minn. transgender children find some hope in reassurance from Dayton, school officials”

How Citizens United gave Republicans a bonanza of seats in U.S. state legislatures

The following article by Nour Abdul-Razzak, Carlo Prato and Stéphane Wolton was posted on the Washington Post website February 24, 2017:

This week, federal election commissioner and former commission chair Ann Ravel publicly announced her upcoming resignation. She didn’t mince words: “The mission of the FEC is essential to ensure a fair electoral process. Yet since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, our political campaigns have been awash in unlimited, often dark money.”

Citizens United is one of the most controversial Supreme Court rulings of recent years. Issued in 2010, it establishes that “outside spending” in elections qualifies as constitutionally protected speech, effectively removing restrictions that date back to 1947. As a result, corporations and unions have the right to spend unlimited (and largely undisclosed) amounts of money advocating in favor of or against specific candidates. Many, including President Barack Obama, have disagreed with the decision. During the past presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly endorsed this view, referring to the super PACs which emerged as a result of Citizens United as a “total phony deal.” Calls for change have also come from others within the Republican Party. Continue reading “How Citizens United gave Republicans a bonanza of seats in U.S. state legislatures”

White House Bars Times and Other News Outlets From Briefing

The following article by Michael M. Grynbaum was posted on the New York Times website February 24, 2017:

Journalists from The New York Times and several other news organizations were prohibited from attending a briefing by President Trump’s press secretary on Friday, a highly unusual breach of relations between the White House and its press corps.

Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times and Politico were not allowed to enter the West Wing office of the press secretary, Sean M. Spicer, for the scheduled briefing. Aides to Mr. Spicer only allowed in reporters from a handpicked group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed.

Those organizations included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended.

Reporters from Time magazine and The Associated Press, who were set to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest of the White House’s actions.

“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the press corps, quickly rebuked the White House’s actions.

“The W.H.C.A. board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” the association president, Jeff Mason, said in a statement. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

The White House move came hours after Mr. Trump delivered a slashing attack on the news media in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The president denounced news organizations as “dishonest” purveyors of “fake news” and mocked journalists for claiming free speech rights.

“They always bring up the First Amendment,” Mr. Trump said to cheers.

A White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played down the events in an email on Friday afternoon.

“We invited the pool so everyone was represented,” Ms. Sanders wrote. “We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool. Nothing more than that.”

Mr. Spicer’s small-group Friday session, known as a gaggle, was scheduled as a no-camera event, less formal than his usual briefings that are carried live on cable news. But past administrations have not hand-selected outlets that can attend such sessions.

“It was clear that they let in a lot of news outlets with less reach who are Trump-friendly,” said Noah Bierman, a White House reporter for The Los Angeles Times, who was barred. “They let in almost every network but CNN. That’s concerning, the handpicking aspect of it.”

Two of the barred outlets, CNN and The Times, have been a particular focus of Mr. Trump’s ire. And during the presidential campaign, some journalists from BuzzFeed News and Politico were prohibited from attending Trump rallies.

Representatives of the barred news organizations made clear that they believed the White House’s actions on Friday were punitive.

“Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like,” CNN said in a statement.

Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, called it “the White House’s apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like.”

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CPAC Is Trying To Wash The “Alt-Right” Stench Off Breitbart

The following article by Matt Gertz was posted on the Media Matters website February 23, 2017:

The term “alt-right” is toxic. It should be. The loose confederation of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and misogynists have spent the last year spreading fear, hatred, and conspiracy theories.

The problem for conservatives is that the movement is directly connected to the major right-wing news outlet Breitbart.com; its former executive chairman, Stephen Bannon; and Bannon’s new boss, President Donald Trump. Continue reading “CPAC Is Trying To Wash The “Alt-Right” Stench Off Breitbart”