Tag: Trump White House

Trump’s intel power play spooks the spooks

The CIA never welcomed its overlords in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But now, the agency confronts its worst nightmare.

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe to serve as the nation’s intel chief has led to some apprehension within the intelligence community, which has only grudgingly come to accept the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as a force for good.

The office, established in 2004 to better coordinate the flow of information between agencies after the intelligence failures that led up to 9/11, has been most effective as a day-to-day manager focusing on bureaucratic and budgeting issues, intel veterans said — giving the agencies political top cover and more freedom to focus on their core missions.

But with a grip on the President’s Daily Brief, broad discretion over the agencies’ responsiveness to Congress, and responsibility for intelligence community whistleblowing and source protection, the DNI can easily veer into the political and revive the kind of friction that plagued its relationship with the intelligence community in its early days. Continue reading.

Official: White House didn’t want to tell seniors not to fly

NEW YORK — The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC.  Con

The person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity did not have authorization to talk about the matter. The person did not have direct knowledge about why the decision to kill the language was made or who made the call. Continue reading.

New coronavirus phase puts spotlight on White House pick

The Hill logoThe White House is counting on a retired Army colonel and former Obama appointee to help lead the administration’s response to the coronavirus as the outbreak spreads across the country and claims more lives.

Former colleagues of Dr. Deborah Birx, who recently served as the State Department’s global AIDS coordinator, say President Trump and Vice President Pence have landed on someone with the qualifications to tackle the biggest public health crisis the nation has faced in years.

“She is somebody that knows how to manage the whole of the U.S. government to move it toward a particular goal. If the White House lets her do that, it could be exactly the kind of coordination that has been lacking up to this point,” said Matthew Kavanaugh, who directs Georgetown’s Global Health Policy and Governance Initiative and knows Birx from his years working on global HIV policy. Continue reading.

House Democrats request appeal asking court to enforce subpoena for former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn

Washington Post logoHouse Democrats asked a federal appeals court in Washington on Friday to reconsider enforcing a congressional subpoena for President Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn.

The request comes after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the courts have no authority to resolve the separation-of-powers dispute between the White House and Democrats in Congress.

Lawyers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) want a full complement of judges on the appeals court to overturn the ruling from a three-judge panel of the same court. If last week’s ruling stands, it means McGahn can defy the subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee.

Trump loses another White House ‘original’

The departure of a top communications official comes as the president struggles to craft a consistent message on the coronavirus outbreak.

Adam Kennedy, who led the White House’s rapid response efforts on impeachment and other crises, including Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle, is leaving the government later this month, according to two White House officials.

Kennedy, a deputy communications director who was also a deputy assistant to the president, has overseen a team of 11 communications staffers and also worked on building out messaging materials for various White House policy rollouts, including tax reform. A top research official at the Republican National Committee during 2016, he has worked in the White House since the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Kennedy will be replaced by Julia Hahn, a former Breitbart writer who is currently director of rapid response and surrogate operations for the White House, according to one of the White House officials. Hahn will report to White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

What A Sane Government Would Do

As the new coronavirus casts a frightening shadow across the nation and the world, it is glaringly obvious how poorly prepared we are for the pandemic — despite many warnings we should have heeded over the past two decades. Perhaps we will again escape without catastrophic consequences, although that is by no means certain.

If we do, it will largely be a function of lucky circumstance. But we may not be so lucky again. And there are many things that a competent and intelligent government can do — could have done — to prevent the worst.

Competent and intelligent government is not what exists in Washington now. We know that not only because everything President Donald Trump has said about COVID-19 is precisely false, or because the Trump administration has screwed up the simplest preparations for its spread, but because two years ago, this president dismantled the agencies created by his predecessor after the Ebola outbreak to cope with a future medical crisis. Continue reading.

Members left Trump administration coronavirus briefing frustrated

The administration has been unable to answer questions on how the uninsured would be covered for testing and treatment

Trump administration health officials Thursday briefed House members on how they plan to ramp up testing to keep up with the rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak, but lawmakers are frustrated with the pace of testing availability and were emerging from frequent briefings with more questions than answers.

The administration has been unable to answer questions about how the uninsured would be covered for the testing and treatment they might need, according to House members who attended Thursday’s briefing with Health and Human Services officials.

Federal officials have been briefing members on a near-daily basis, and as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States continues to grow, “the level of concern at each successive hearing I’ve been to has grown,” said Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif. Continue reading.

The McGahn ruling could shred Congress’s ability to oversee the executive branch

Washington Post logoTHE U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last week that it could not order former White House counsel Donald McGahn to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, though the committee issued a subpoena that Mr. McGahn flouted, on President Trump’s orders. If allowed to stand, the ruling would shred Congress’s ability to oversee the executive branch.

Courts have previously brokered informal compromises between Congress and the president on congressional subpoenas, avoiding definitive rulings that would settle the extent of lawmakers’ power to demand documents and testimony. Many judges still wish to avoid formal involvement. The D.C. Circuit’s two-judge majority warned that if courts refereed subpoena disputes between the executive branch and Congress, they would preclude the dealmaking and “flexible settlements” that typically resolve such problems.

But the era of give-and-take has ended. One party in the equation definitively broke faith: President Trump is now refusing to engage in any negotiations with Congress on providing information or witnesses. By refusing to act, courts are not preserving balance; they are ratifying its destruction, because the balance rested in large measure on the possibility that Congress could resort to the courts. “What would disrupt the present balance of power is not a holding that such lawsuits are permissible but the decision that they are not,” Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote in a dissent. “The judiciary can upset that careful equilibrium when it dismisses a suit that it ought to decide.” Continue reading.

Pence Press Secretary Katie Miller condescendingly blasts reporter for asking if uninsured can get tested for coronavirus

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller blasted a well-known reporter for asking if uninsured Americans will be able to get tested for COVID-19.

Miller, recently married to white nationalist and Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller, condescendingly criticized CNN political analyst Brian Karem during Wednesday’s coronavirus press briefing at the White House.

Karem, who is also the White House correspondent for Playboy, at the end of the event asked, “Guys, guys, can the uninsured, can the uninsured get tested?” Continue reading.

Trump picks loyalist who helped Nunes hype bogus Obama wiretap claim for top NSC intel position

AlterNet logoIn contrast to all the U.S. presidents who were very reliant on their advisers, President Donald Trump has shown a strong preference for unquestioning loyalists — and he has been surrounding himself with them in recent months, from Attorney General William Barr to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A recent loyalist addition to Team Trump, according to Politico reporters Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman, is Michael Ellis, now senior director of intelligence on the National Security Council (NSC).

Ellis is known for his work as a deputy to White House attorney John Eisenberg and as a counsel to the House Intelligence Committee when it was still being chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (a far-right California Republican and strident Trump ally). He and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who now serves as national security adviser to United States Attorney General, were the two White House officials who gave Nunes intelligence reports purporting to show that former officials in President Barack Obama’s administration improperly “unmasked” members of the Trump transition team. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), later said the unsmasking narrative was “all created by Devin Nunes.”

Ellis’ name, Bertrand and Lippman note, has also been heard in connection with the Ukraine scandal: according to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — who Trump fired from the NSC after being acquitted by the U.S. Senate on two articles of impeachment — it was Ellis and Eisenberg who decided to move the record of Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conservation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into a top-secret NSC server. House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued that Trump committed an impeachable offense when, that day, he tried to pressure Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Continue reading.