The following article by Nicole Lewis was posted on the Washington Post website September 11, 2017:
“Just to add on, tremendous drugs pouring into the United States at levels that nobody has ever seen before. This has happened over the last three to four years in particular. The wall will stop much of the drugs from pouring into this country and poisoning our youth. We need the wall. It is imperative.”
— President Trump, remarks at a news conference with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland, Aug. 28, 2017
The following article by Jonathan Miller was posted on the Roll Call website September 11, 2017:
Some see commission as Washington’s most dangerous advisory board
President Donald Trump, flanked by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in Washington in July. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images File Photo)
If anyone in Washington was wondering just how seriously Democrats were taking a presidential advisory commission tasked with finding voter fraud, the answer came in late August, when Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer compared the commission with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who clashed with counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier in the month.
“If the president wants to truly show that he rejects the discrimination agenda of the white supremacist movement, he will rescind the Executive Order that created this commission,” the New York Democrat wrote in a post on Medium.com. He added that the commission was “a ruse,” whose “only intention is to disenfranchise voters.”
But that was not all. Schumer drew a line in the sand by warning that he would seek to attach riders to important bills coming up in Congress this month to block the commission: “If the president does not act, the Congress should prohibit its operation through one of the must-pass legislative vehicles in September,” he wrote. That could include a host of measures, such as a children’s health care program, a flood insurance reauthorization program and a bill for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The following column by the Washington Post Editorial Board was posted on their website September 10, 2017:
ONCE AGAIN, a federal court has ruled against the Trump adminis
FILE – In this May 15, 2017 file photo, protesters wave signs and chant during a demonstration against President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban outside a federal courthouse in Seattle. 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017, rejected the Trump administration’s limited view of who is allowed into the United States under the president’s travel ban, saying grandparents, cousins and similarly close relations of people in the U.S. should not be prevented from coming to the country. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) (Ted S. Warren/AP)
ration’s temporary ban on admission into the United States of refugees and citizens of six majority-Muslim countries. And once again, the Justice Department is appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court — this time arguing that the government should not have to exclude from the ban grandparents or other close family members of people within the United States, along with refugees sponsored by American resettlement organizations, while the case is pending before the court.
It’s not clear what the Justice Department hopes to gain by appealing this injunction against Mr. Trump’s executive order, as the Supreme Court was already set to hear arguments on the ban’s legality on Oct. 10. What’s more, a significant portion of the ban will likely have expired by that date — and the rest before the justices can even rule on the case.
Mr. Trump’s order halts entry into the United States by citizens of the six banned countries for 90 days and suspends refugee admissions for 120 days. After courts blocked the ban, Mr. Trump clarified that these clocks would begin ticking as soon as the policy was allowed to go into effect. Because the Supreme Court lifted in part the lower-court injunctions against the order on June 26, the refugee ban will expire in late October, and the entry ban at the end of September. Continue reading “Trump’s travel ban may expire before it reaches the Supreme Court”
The following article by Benn Protess, Danielle Ivory and Steve Edier was posted on the New York Times website September 10, 2017:
Surrounded by religious leaders, President Trump signed an executive order in the Rose Garden in May that took aim at Obama-era regulations intended to protect gay people from discrimination and ensure that women have access to birth control. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
The Trump administration opened the door to allowing more firearms on federal lands. It scrubbed references to “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” from the description of a federal program for victims of sex trafficking. And, on the advice of religious leaders, it eliminated funding to international groups that provide abortion.
While these initiatives lacked the fanfare of some of President Trump’s high-profile proclamations — like his ban on transgender people in the military — they point to a fundamental repurposing of the federal bureaucracy to promote conservative social priorities.
The following editorial by the New York Times‘ Editorial Board was posted on their website September 9, 2017:
Credit: Celia Jacobs
The news was hard to digest until one realized it was part of a much larger and increasingly disturbing pattern in the Trump administration. On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.
The $1 million study had been requested by two West Virginia health agencies following multiple studies suggesting increased rates of birth defects, cancer and other health problems among people living near big surface coal-mining operations in Appalachia. The order to shut it down came just hours before the scientists were scheduled to meet with affected residents of Kentucky.
The Interior Department said the project was put on hold as a result of an agencywide budgetary review of grants and projects costing more than $100,000. Continue reading “President Trump’s War on Science”
The following article by Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush was posted on the New York Times website September 8, 2017:
John F. Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff, has been trying to impose order at the White House. Credit Al Drago for The New York Times
Lost in the scramble to cope with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the response to North Korea’s nuclear provocations and the shock at President Trump’s instant alliance with Democrats was a little-noticed bureaucratic earthquake that shook the White House this week.
The following article by Jaweed Kaleem and Maura Dolan was posted on the Los Angeles Times website September 7, 2017:
A rally against the travel ban in New York in June 2017. Credit: Alba Vigaray / European Pressphoto Agency
A federal appeals court onThursdaydenied the Trump administration’s request to block more travelersfrom six Muslim-majority nations and permitted all vetted refugees to be admitted.
The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals could significantly decrease the number of people stopped from traveling to the U.S. under President Trump’s travel ban. The ban currently halts nearly all refugee resettlement and travel by foreign nationals from six mostly Muslim countries unless they have close connections in the U.S. Continue reading “Appeals court rules against Trump administration, relaxing travel ban restrictions again”
The following article by Steven Rosenfeld was posted on the AlterNet website September 6, 2017:
Six snapshots of who DACA recipients are: strivers, hard-working, responsible, honest, vetted—and more than half are women.
Credit: Gili Getz / Movimiento Cosecha
Within hours of President Trump announcing he would end the DACA program, some right-wingers took to the airwaves saying were fed up with being told to have sympathy for these youths and families that the federal government was poised to break up.
The following article by Emily C. Singer was posted on the Mic website September 6, 2017:
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Thursday announced that the Trump administration is rolling back sexual assault guidelines issued by former President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” DeVos said during a speech at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. “That’s why we must do better, because the current approach isn’t working.”
However while DeVos said the guidelines will be rolled back, she did not announce any new policies that would immediately be put in place to help combat sexual assault on college and university campuses across the country.
“Our interest is in exploring all alternatives that would help schools meet their Title IX obligations and protect all students,” DeVos said. “We welcome input and look forward to hearing more ideas.”
In 2011, the Obama administration told colleges and universities that they have an obligation under Title IX to combat sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus. If colleges and universities did not meet that obligation, the Obama administration threatened to pull their federal funding. Continue reading “Betsy DeVos announces rollback of Obama-era Title IX sexual assault guidelines”
The following article by Kira Lerner was posted on the Think Progress website September 6, 2017:
Where have we heard this before?
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE, LEFT, ACCOMPANIED BY VICE-CHAIR KANSAS SECRETARY OF STATE KRIS KOBACH, RIGHT, SPEAKS DURING THE FIRST MEETING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON ELECTION INTEGRITY AT THE EISENHOWER EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING ON THE WHITE HOUSE COMPLEX IN WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2017. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/ANDREW HARNIK
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Trump’s voting commission are alleging that co-chair Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) and other commissioners are committing the same offense that haunted Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency: using private email for government business.
In a court filing Tuesday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law claims that members of the commission “have been using personal email accounts rather than federal government systems to conduct Commission work.” The complaint alleges that use of non-government email would violate the Presidential Records Act.
“Defendants’ counsel further stated they did not yet have any settled plan for how they would collect emails from these personal, non-federal government systems, or even who would conduct the searches,” the filing notes, adding that it’s “critically important” that the emails from personal accounts are logged in the same way as government emails. Continue reading “Trump voting commission allegedly uses personal email for government business”
