Tag: Trump White House

For Trump and his cronies, draining the swamp means ousting experts

Washington Post logoOnce upon a time, President Trump pledged to “drain the swamp.”

This resonated with lots of Americans, who resented the ecosystem of interest groups rigging government in their favor: corrupt officials, revolving-door lobbyists, palm-greasing executives and the network of pseudo-think tanks and analysts funded by industries trying to pass off propaganda as impartial research.

In other words, those who use money and access to accumulate more money and access.

View the complete August 8 article by Catherine Rampell on The Washington Post website here.

Trump: All El Paso shooting patients being treated at hospital ‘refused to meet with president’

Every El Paso mass shooting patient being treated at a local hospital refused to meet with Donald Trump when he visited, a spokesperson for the facility has said.

The US president on Wednesday travelled to both the Texas city and Dayton, Ohio, to meet with victims and first responders following two mass shootings over the weekend which left 31 people dead and dozens injured.

But following Mr Trump’s departure from University Medical Center (UMC), where he met two victims already discharged by the hospital, UMC spokesperson Ryan Mielke revealed the eight patients still being treated there did not agree to meet the US leader.

View the complete August 8 article by Tom Embury-Dennis of The Independent on the Yahoo News website here.

Reporter reveals the White House’s ‘extraordinary lengths’ to protect Trump’s thin skin by shielding him from protests

AlterNet logoDiscussing Donald Trump’s visits to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire detailed how the White House tries to protect the president from criticism.

“Donald Trump has never had an easy time seeing protesters lining the streets near the motorcade,” he said. “And the White House, particularly in recent months, have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep those images from him.”

He continued: “I’m remembering last year in Parkland, when he was there after that school shooting, he went nowhere near the school itself or where the protests were and just paid a quiet visit to a hospital. But most strikingly, this past year in London, where he was there and there were huge protests greeting him in the British capital. And instead of just driving two or three miles where he’d have to see them, they took helicopters to avoid them, to fly well above the protests.”

View the complete August 8 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

House Democrats file lawsuit to enforce subpoena against McGahn

The Hill logoHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday to enforce a subpoena for testimony from Don McGahn, the former White House counsel who at the Trump administration’s direction defied lawmakers’ request to appear before the Judiciary panel.

The announcement comes two weeks after former special counsel Robert Mueller, who interviewed McGahn extensively as part of his probe into possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, testified for nearly seven hours on Capitol Hill about his 22-month long Russia investigation.

Lawyers for Judiciary Committee Democrats described McGahn as both “critical” and the “most important fact witness” during a call with reporters Wednesday before the lawsuit was filed, noting that he witnessed key obstruction episodes examined by Mueller.

View the complete August 7 by Olivia Beavers, Jacqueline Thomsen and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

All of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives are failing — here’s why

AlterNet logoDo you remember that time when Donald Trump tweeted that “trade wars are good and easy to win?” I can’t think of a better example of this president’s ignorance. He started a trade war with China back in May when trade talks broke down. Here is what has happened since then.

  • Trade talks broke down once again last week and Trump threatened to add 10% tariffs on another $300 billion in imports beginning September 1st.
  • The Chinese central bank allowed the yuan to weaken due to concern about “trade protectionism and new tariffs on China.”
  • The Chinese government suspended purchases of U.S. agricultural products and doesn’t rule out more tariffs.
  • The Trump administration designated China as a currency manipulator.

So now it looks like the president is going to add a currency war to the trade war. Who knows where this all will end? What is clear is that Americans are paying the price for his ignorance.

On another foreign policy front, the situation isn’t much better.

View the complete August 7 article by Nancy LeTourneau from The Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

Scalia, skilled at upending rules, may soon write them at Labor

Trump’s Labor secretary choice, Eugene Scalia, built his reputation by upending regulations on behalf of business

With three major regulations on the launching pad at the Labor Department, the Trump administration may have found the man with the right stuff to issue air-tight rules that can withstand legal challenges.

The president’s new choice for Labor secretary, Eugene Scalia, built a reputation as a skilled litigator by upending regulations on behalf of the business community, from worker injury cases under 1990 disabilities legislation to an Obama-era rule requiring financial advisers to put clients’ interests first.

Now Scalia could hold the pen on final versions of three regulations covering overtime pay, joint employer relationships and calculation of the so-called regular rate of pay.

View the complete August 5 article by Mark Bocchetti on The Roll Call website here.

Emails show Stephen Miller pressed hard to limit green cards

One former Trump official said White House senior adviser Stephen Miller has maintained a “singular obsession” with the public charge rule.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller wasn’t getting an immigration regulation he wanted. So he sent a series of scorching emails to top immigration officials, calling the department an “embarrassment” for not acting faster.

The regulation in question would allow the Department of Homeland Security to bar legal immigrants from obtaining green cards if they receive certain government benefits. The rule will likely be released in the coming days, according to a pair of current and former Trump officials briefed on the timeline.

View the complete August 2 article by Ted Hesson on the Politico website here.

Trump walks back plan to nominate John Ratcliffe as DNI

Axios logoPresident Trump announced that Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) would not be nominated to become the next director of national intelligence in a pair of Friday tweets, saying it would expose him to “months of slander and libel.”

“Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people. John has therefore decided to stay in Congress.”

The state of play, via Axios’ Jonathan Swan: Ratcliffe withdrew himself, per sources familiar with the situation. He was watching coverage of his possible nomination pile up, and the White House was getting word that he would struggle to get enough Republicans to confirm him. Ratcliffe “thought better to pull out now than put family through confirmation only to come up shy,” texted a source familiar with his thinking.

  • According to a third source familiar with the situation, Ratcliffe did not anticipate the intensity of the reaction to his name being floated.

View the complete August 2 article on the Axios website here.

Trump’s pick for national intelligence director is disengaged from committee work on Capitol Hill, officials say

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s nominee to be the nation’s next spy chief is regarded as a relatively disengaged member of the House Intelligence Committee and is little known across the ranks of spy agencies he has been tapped to lead, according to interviews with congressional and intelligence officials.

Though Rep. John Ratcliffe’s membership on the House committee is perhaps his most important credential for the top intelligence job, officials said he has yet to take part in one of its overseas trips to learn more about spy agencies’ work. The other new lawmakers on the panel have done so or are scheduled to travel in the coming months.

It is also unclear whether Ratcliffe (R-Tex) has spent much time at the headquarters of the CIA, the National Security Agency or other parts of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community that he has been nominated to direct.

View the complete August 1 article by Shane Harris and Greg Miller on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s pick to lead U.S. intelligence claims he arrested 300 illegal immigrants in a single day. He didn’t.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s intelligence community often cites a massive roundup of immigrant workers at poultry plants in 2008 as a highlight of his career. Rep. John Ratcliffe claims that as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas, he was the leader of the immigration crackdown, describing it as one of the largest cases of its kind.

“As a U.S. Attorney, I arrested over 300 illegal immigrants on a single day,” Rat­cliffe (R-Tex.) says on his congressional website.

But a closer look at the case shows that Ratcliffe’s claims conflict with the court record and the recollections of others who participated in the operation — at a time when he is under fire for embellishing his record.

View the complete August 1 article by Robert O’Harrow, Jr. and Shawn Boburg on The Washington Post website here.