Tag: Trump Administration

Under the Trump administration, US airstrikes are killing more civilians

The following article by Steven Feldstein was posted on the Conversation website October 13, 2017:

Credit: selmyomer via Morguefile

When President Donald Trump took office in January, it was unclear whether the bombast from his campaign would translate into an aggressive new strategy against terrorism. At campaign rallies he pledged to “bomb the hell” out of the Islamic State. He openly mused about killing the families of terrorists, a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits violence against noncombatants.

Ten months into his presidency, a clearer picture is emerging. The data indicate several alarming trends. Continue reading “Under the Trump administration, US airstrikes are killing more civilians”

Where’s Zinke? The interior secretary’s special flag offers clues.

The following article by Lisa Rein was posted on the Washington Post website October 12, 2017:

The flag of the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, bottom, flew last week above the headquarters building in downtown Washington. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

At the Interior Department’s headquarters in downtown Washington, Secretary Ryan Zinke has revived an arcane military ritual that no one can remember ever happening in the federal government.

A security staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a special secretarial flag whenever Zinke enters the building. When the secretary goes home for the day or travels, the flag — a blue banner emblazoned with the agency’s bison seal flanked by seven white stars representing the Interior bureaus — comes down.

In Zinke’s absence, the ritual is repeated to raise an equally obscure flag for Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt. Continue reading “Where’s Zinke? The interior secretary’s special flag offers clues.”

Trump’s authoritarian streak

The following article by Stephen Collinson was posted on the CNN website October 12, 2017:

Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Washington (CNN — )When he looks in the mirror, President Donald Trump sees a strongman.

He vows to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea, admires the world’s toughest leaders, calls for television networks to lose their licenses and roasts critics on an Orwellian Twitter feed.

But he’s an autocrat in word rather than deed. Continue reading “Trump’s authoritarian streak”

Republican Senator Asks If Trump Is Recanting His Oath Of Office

The following article by Ed Mazza was posted on the Huffington Post website October 12, 2017:

Ben Sasse questions whether Trump is failing to “preserve, protect, and defend” the First Amendment.

A Republican senator is openly questioning Donald Trump’s commitment to defending the Constitution after the president’s latest attacks on the media.

Trump on Wednesday tweeted:

Continue reading “Republican Senator Asks If Trump Is Recanting His Oath Of Office”

“I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President is “Unraveling”

The following article by Gabriel Sherman was posted on the Vanity Fair website October 11, 2017:

In recent days, I’ve spoken with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.

Donald Trump in the Diplomatic Room at the White House, October 2, 2017. Credit: Joshua Roberts/Reuters.

At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’s remarkable New York Times interview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”

The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” Continue reading ““I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President is “Unraveling””

Doubtful Science Behind Arguments to Restrict Birth Control Access

The following article by Aaron E. Carroll was posted on the New York Times website October 10, 2017:

In a new rule about coverage of contraception, the Trump administration argues against the positives of birth control and highlights potential harms. But those claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The new rule weakens the mandate for health coverage of contraception under the Affordable Care Act, giving more leeway to employers with religious or moral objections. It’s a move with many legal and economic implications, but my interest here is with the science — specifically with the assertions made by the Department of Health and Human Services about the benefits and harms from contraception. Continue reading “Doubtful Science Behind Arguments to Restrict Birth Control Access”

White House Confirms Stephen Miller Was a Right-Wing Creep Back in High School Too

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the AlterNet website October 9, 2017:

Trump’s adviser once crashed a girls’ track meet to prove his athletic superiority. Really.

You remember Stephen Miller, don’t you? He’s the smug, dead-eyed presidential adviser the White House trots out when it needs someone to deliver its transparently dishonesttalking points about immigration. Miller’s track record as a racist xenophobe reportedly stretches back to his high school days, when he dropped a childhood friend for being Latino, showed up to meetings among students of color with the sole purpose of derailing their efforts, and suggested classmates do everything in their power to demean and humiliate janitors. Now, a New York Times profile adds one more gross detail to the Miller file, which was already thick with reasons to dislike the Roy Cohn lookalike.

[Miller] jumped, uninvited, into the final stretch of a girls’ track meet, apparently intent on proving his athletic supremacy over the opposite sex. (The White House, reaching for exculpatory context, noted that this was a girls’ team from another school, not his own.)

Continue reading “White House Confirms Stephen Miller Was a Right-Wing Creep Back in High School Too”

‘Dreamers’ Deal May Hinge On Separating Trump From Hard-Liners On His Staff

The following article by Lisa Mascaro and Brian Bennett of the Tribune Content Agency was posted on the National Memo website October 10, 2017:

Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers who favor a deal to protect some 700,000 young immigrants facing possible deportation because of the end of the Obama administration’s DACA program are seeking to drive a wedge between President Donald Trump and hard-liners on his staff, launching appeals directly to a president who they see as potentially sympathetic to people brought illegally to the U.S. as children.

In his public comments, Trump has shown an unwillingness to be boxed in by his most hard-line advisers on immigration. He initially wavered on what to do with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected the young immigrants known as “Dreamers,” then openly contradicted Attorney General Jeff Sessions hours after the attorney general announced the end of the program last month. Continue reading “‘Dreamers’ Deal May Hinge On Separating Trump From Hard-Liners On His Staff”

Interior Secretary Zinke’s claim that the U.S. has struggled to produce ‘low-cost, abundant and reliable energy’

The following article by Nicole Lewis was posted on the Washington Post website October 11, 2017:

President Trump made several false claims — new and repeated — about coal, energy, the Paris Accord and the environment at an event celebrating ‘unleashing American energy’ on June 29. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“Our country has inherited an energy-dependent country from previous generations, and in recent years, we’ve struggled to be self-sufficient in producing low-cost, abundant and reliable energy.”

— Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, in remarks during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Sept. 29, 2017

During a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Sept. 29, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke laid out his vision for U.S. energy dominance. In his opening remarks, Zinke said the Trump administration does not support an agenda of “regulation and red tape,” which he argues keeps the U.S. reliant on foreign energy sources and weakens its national security. Continue reading “Interior Secretary Zinke’s claim that the U.S. has struggled to produce ‘low-cost, abundant and reliable energy’”

Trump’s Puerto Rico video tells positive story but leaves a lot on cutting-room floor

The following article by Jenna Johnson was posted on the Washington Post website October 10, 2017:

White House correspondent Jenna Johnson dissects the holes in President Trump’s Puerto Rico relief video. (Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

A few minutes into a video about Puerto Rico relief efforts that President Trump tweeted out this week is a short clip about U.S. Forest Service workers clearing fallen trees off a road in the rural interior.

Over the sound of chain saws, the Forest Service’s fire chief explains how this will allow for the easier distribution of food, medical supplies and other aid. But his full comments are cut off by a shift to footage of a ship used as a hospital. Continue reading “Trump’s Puerto Rico video tells positive story but leaves a lot on cutting-room floor”