Tag: Trump Administration

Stephen Miller vs. Jim Acosta sent the White House news briefing completely off the rails

The following article by Callum Borchers was posted on the Washington Post website August 2, 2017:

Stephen Miller, President Trump’s senior policy adviser, got into a tense exchange on Aug. 2 with CNN reporter Jim Acosta about immigration. (Reuters)

How strange was Wednesday’s White House press briefing? Put it this way: Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs — who set a pretty high bar for weirdness when he was body slammed by a congressional candidate just 10 weeks ago — found the scene in the briefing room so strange that he joked about unwittingly ingesting a hallucinogenic. Continue reading “Stephen Miller vs. Jim Acosta sent the White House news briefing completely off the rails”

Difficult road ahead in Congress for bill to slow legal immigration into U.S.

The following article by Jamie Dupree was posted on the WFTV website August 2, 2017:

Despite a very big public boost from President Donald Trump and White House officials, a plan to scale back on legal immigration into the United States, and to emphasize more highly skilled workers, faces a tough fight in the Congress, as key Republican Senators quickly signaled their disagreement with the plan.

“The President is all behind this,” Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) told me a few hours after he joined with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and the President at the White House on their bill, nicknamed the “RAISE” Act.

“This was a landmark event to get started on an issue that was a seminal issue for him in the campaign,” Perdue added. Continue reading “Difficult road ahead in Congress for bill to slow legal immigration into U.S.”

Can this marriage be saved? Relationship between Trump, Senate GOP hits new skids.

The following article by Sean Sullivan was posted on the Washington Post website August 1, 2017:

The relationship between President Trump and Senate Republicans has deteriorated so sharply in recent days that some are openly defying his directives, bringing long-simmering tensions to a boil as the GOP labors to reorient its stalled legislative agenda.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced Tuesday that he would work with his Democratic colleagues to “stabilize and strengthen” the individual insurance market under the Affordable Care Act, which the president has badgered the Senate to keep trying to repeal. Alexander also urged the White House to keep up payments to insurers that help low-income consumers afford plans, which Trump has threatened to cut off.

Several Republican senators have sought to distance themselves from the president, who has belittled them as looking like “fools” and tried to strong-arm their agenda and browbeat them into changing a venerated rule to make it easier to ram through legislation along party lines. Continue reading “Can this marriage be saved? Relationship between Trump, Senate GOP hits new skids.”

In Trump era, lobbyists boldly take credit for writing a bill to protect their industry

The following article by Kimberly Kindy was posted on the Washington Post website August 1, 2017:

For two years, lobbyists for doctors and their insurers met regularly around a conference table a few blocks from the Capitol to draft an overhaul of the nation’s medical malpractice laws. The resulting legislation proposed strict limits on damages for some plaintiffs and sharply lower fees for their attorneys.

Last month, with no public hearings and few modifications, the House voted to approve the measure — outraging victims’ rights advocates, who accused lawmakers of acting in secret to slam the courtroom door on people who have been grievously injured by doctors.

It isn’t unusual for industry stakeholders to draft legislation. But in this case, lobbyists were able to rapidly shepherd their bill to House passage with minimal input from the public or even members of Congress. Lobbyists then crowed about the achievement, boasting that the House-passed measure was nearly identical to one they provided to the House Judiciary Committee and that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced on Feb. 24. Continue reading “In Trump era, lobbyists boldly take credit for writing a bill to protect their industry”

The most notable firings and resignations in the Trump administration

The following article by Len De Groot, Chris Keller and Jon Schleuss was posted on the Los Angeles Times website July 28, 2017 and updated July 31, 2017:

Animation of people walking into and out of the white house

A lot of people have left President Trump’s early administration — Anthony Scaramucci was removed as director of communications on Monday, three days after the replacement of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

The White House communications staff has been the scene of many of the recent turnovers as it wrestles to craft a message sometimes at odds with Trump’s frequent tweeting.

Continue reading “The most notable firings and resignations in the Trump administration”

How White House officials were ‘fooled by email prankster’

The following article was posted on the BBC News website August 1, 2017:

Email prankster @Sinon_reborn: Reince (me) giving @Scaramucci something to think about. He never replied hahaImage copyrightTWITTER
Image captionThe hacker shared emails on Twitter that he sent while pretending to be Reince Priebus, the recently sacked White House chief of staff

A UK hacker reportedly fooled top White House officials into engaging in fake email exchanges.

The self-proclaimed “email prankster” convinced a senior cyber security adviser he was the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, CNN says.

He also goaded the then media chief, Anthony Scaramucci, in the guise of ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus. Continue reading “How White House officials were ‘fooled by email prankster’”

How the Religious Liberty Executive Order Licenses Discrimination

The following article by Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza and Sharita Gruberg was posted on the Center for American Progress website July 31, 2017:

This column contains a correction.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during his interview with The Associated Press, July 28, 2017, at the National Police Headquarters in San Salvador, El Salvador.  Credit:  AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The Trump administration’s draft religious liberty executive order, leaked in February, was explicit in its directives and sweeping in its implications. The order President Donald Trump signed in May—the “Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty”—rather than formally codifying a view of religious liberty or instructing federal agencies on how to interpret the law, tasks the U.S. attorney general—currently Jeff Sessions—with advancing his interpretation of religious liberty through administrative guidance.* Sessions has already taken steps to oppose workplace protections against discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Now he will begin extending protections for those seeking a license to discriminate.

In recent remarks to the Alliance Defending Freedom, classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group in part for opposing LGBT rights and supporting a marriage equality ban, Attorney General Sessions suggested he will soon issue guidance dictating how agencies should interpret the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was passed to protect people from being discriminated against on the basis of their religion. RFRA requires the government to provide a “compelling reason” to “substantially burden” religious exercise. Sessions will likely interpret the “compelling reason” requirement more strictly and the substantial “burden” requirement much more broadly, which would turn this protection against discrimination into an affirmative right to discriminate. Continue reading “How the Religious Liberty Executive Order Licenses Discrimination”

Kris Kobach and Kansas’ SAFE Act

The following article by Chelsie Bright was posted on the Conversation website July 27, 2017:

A Kansas voter prepares to cast her ballot – and prove her identity – in the 2014 midterm elections. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

If you want to understand President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission, it helps to study what happened in Kansas.

Six years before Trump was tweeting about stolen electionsand unsubstantiated claims of millions of fraudulent votes, Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, was promoting the idea that widespread voter fraud threatens the integrity of our electoral system.

It should come as no surprise that Trump chose Kobach to be the vice chairman of Vice President Mike Pence’s new Commission on Election Integrity. This appointment gives Kobach a national platform by which to pursue his agenda.

Kansas’ voter ID law went into effect when I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas. The pervasive campaign promoting the new law piqued my interest. My co-author and I set out to assess the impact advertisements – specifically, the “Got ID?” campaign – had on voter turnout during the 2012 election. Continue reading “Kris Kobach and Kansas’ SAFE Act”

Steel Valley’s Youngstown is much more complicated than Trump portrays

The following article by Jenna Johnson was posted on the Washington Post website July 25, 2017:

Credit: City of Youngstown

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — President Trump escaped the roiling turmoil of Washington on Tuesday evening — leaving behind the chaotic effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the intensifying Russia investigation and his latest staff shake-up — to rally with his supporters in this former steel town.

“I was looking at some of those big, once incredible job-producing factories. And my wife, Melania, said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘Those jobs have left Ohio,’ ” Trump said to a cheering audience of several thousand. “They’re all coming back. . . . We’re going to fill up those factories or rip ’em down and build brand new ones. That’s what’s going to happen.” Continue reading “Steel Valley’s Youngstown is much more complicated than Trump portrays”

Trump’s new team offers muddled messages on sanctions, pardons

The following article by David Nakamura and Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2017:

The White House offered conflicting views Sunday of whether President Trump supports the Russia sanctions legislation in Congress, with his top spokesmen contradicting one another just days after launching plans for a more effective messaging strategy.

If Trump was hoping his communications shake-up would bring a fresh approach for a White House that has struggled to respond to a constant state of turmoil, the debut of the team on the Sunday political talk shows was a rough one. Adding to the confusion, one of Trump’s lawyers appeared to contradict his new top spokesman on whether Trump has been discussing his power to issue presidential pardons. Continue reading “Trump’s new team offers muddled messages on sanctions, pardons”