The Trump Administration
Day 527
Saturday 30 June 2018
Dinesh D’Souza says he did Nazi that someone used the hashtag #burnthejews in a tweet he retweeted.
The BMW plant in South Carolina is its largest globally and ships more than 70 percent of its annual production to other export markets
Day 526
Friday 29 June 2018
This White House has been, and is likely to remain, home to the first presidency in American history that is almost completely devoid of culture.
..the US is now the third deadliest country for journalists in 2018, behind only Afghanistan [...] and Syria
Trump has repeatedly told top White House officials he wants to withdraw the United States from the World Trade Organization
Day 525
Thursday 28 June 2018
Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have captured the interest of investigators in the United Kingdom and the United States
Kennedy's retirement from the Supreme Court has put the Senate on the cusp of an all-out war over his replacement
Step 1: Create a group identify around a shared belief.
Step 2: Create a body of rhetoric that the group can repeat to defend their belief
Step 3: Spread the word / start beef
Step 4: Make your group members feel like the scum of the earth and that everyone hates them
Step 5: Escalate
Step 6: The enemy's beliefs and feelings can be completely dismissed.
Step 7: Benevolent Dictatorship
A law enforcement official said the suspect had mutilated his fingers in a possible effort to thwart identification.
...a politically delicate meeting that will take place while the special counsel continues to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.
Many wore foil blankets similar to those given to migrants housed at U.S. detention facilities.
Trump dearly wanted a second vacancy, one that could transform the court for a generation or more. So he used the first opening to help create the second one. He picked Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who had served as a law clerk to Justice Kennedy, to fill Justice Scalia’s seat.
The unsealed search warrant, however, reveals further details about Manafort’s business dealings with Deripaska, whom the U.S. government sanctioned in April.
These powerful businessmen ... were ushered into events typically reserved for top donors and close political allies and were given unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle.
Economists, however, caution that the administration's "America First" policies, which have heightened fears of trade wars, are casting a pall over the economy's prospects.
“We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table”
The aide, Andrew Miller, has not been mentioned before publicly in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Pruitt was livid over Hupp’s testimony ... And he personally reached out to allies in the conservative movement, including some at the influential legal group the Federalist Society, to insist that she had lied about, or at least misunderstood, the request for a used Trump mattress.
Winner's leak of a single document confirming not only everyone's suspicions, but things already stated by US government officials, will net her the longest sentence ever imposed on someone charged under the Espionage Act.
Day 524
Wednesday 27 June 2018
...which charts the path for the decolonization of Puerto Rico and its entry into the Union as a State no later than January 1. 2021.
...mischaracterizing the California congresswoman’s call for a public “push back” against the Trump administration’s policies.
Trump [...] stands to gain personally when groups pay his companies. Since 2015, campaign staff and government officials have spent millions at his properties. Use this interactive graphic to track the money we’ve tallied so far.
The Justice Department charged James Alex Fields Jr., the driver accused of killing a counterprotester at last year’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, with multiple hate crimes Wednesday.
The bill failed on a vote of 301 to 121 despite a last-minute tweet — in all-capital letters — of support from Trump
...backing away from a more aggressive approach that would have declared a national economic emergency and dramatically limited China’s ability to invest in the United States.
“We got more money, we got more brains, we got better houses and apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are and they say they’re the elite.”
Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi editor of the Daily Stormer, was especially pleased. He wrote that “killing journalists is an awesome position to promote”
Bolton once said Russia's election interference was a "true act of war" against the US, and that a policy based on trusting Russia was "doomed to failure."
For much of his tenure, Justice Kennedy has been the median justice, falling in the court’s ideological center
...setting in motion a furious fight over the future of the Supreme Court and giving President Trump the chance to put a conservative stamp on the American legal system for generations.
Their answer, in a 5-4 decision upholding his ban on people from seven countries entering the US, was a definite no.
The summit is expected to take place somewhere outside Russia while Trump is in Europe in mid-July for previously scheduled visits to Belgium and Britain.
Biased comments by officials shaped the outcome of one key court decision, but were ruled of little importance in another.
Roberts wanted to make clear that the majority was not ignoring Trump's anti-Muslim remarks, but concluded that they lacked legal significance.
One of the most dramatic moments in the courtroom came as Sotomayor paused after reading aloud a litany of Trump remarks, including "Islam hates us" and "we're having trouble with Muslims coming into the country,"
The justices said in a 5-4 opinion that state government workers who choose not to join a union cannot be compelled to pay a share of union dues for covering the cost of negotiating contracts.
So much of the history of Harley-Davidson — a company started by the sons of immigrants in what we now call the Rust Belt — is wrapped up in the same concerns dominating the White House, including trade wars, broad-stroke nationalism, celebrity and image maintenance.
Day 523
Tuesday 26 June 2018
...requiring that nearly all children younger than 5 be returned to their parents within 14 days and that older children be returned within 30 days.
With an increasingly unmoored President purposely stoking divisions for perceived political gain, the possibility need well be contemplated.
Chao and McConnell, who are married, were about to climb into a black SUV when they were approached by a small group of young men at Georgetown University. One started repeating, “Why are you separating families?”
...but they did not specify how long it will last.
But the decision’s most important takeaway is the one articulated between the lines of a short concurrence by Justice Anthony Kennedy: When a real threat to the American constitutional order comes — when a president decides to act contrary to fundamental constitutional values — we cannot count on the courts to save us.
Commercial satellite imagery from June 21 indicates that improvements to the infrastructure at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace.
“This war has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars,” [Newt Gingrich] said.
One of the telling features of this political moment is that the president — the lying, slandering, raging, insulting president — constantly whines about how nastily and unfairly other people treat him. It justifies everything.
White House officials have sent conflicting signals over trade policy, resulting in wild market swings.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that California's crisis pregnancy centers do not have to post notices or talk to patients about state services regarding abortions.
The White House promised '70 percent' of the tax cut would go to workers. It didn't.
"I mean, he wouldn't do it for no reason. I look at him as a very smart businessman. And, I mean, if he feels that's what he needed to do, that's what he needed to do."
Erdoğan has stirred concerns among some NATO members by nudging Turkey closer to Russia. Ankara recently purchased an S-400 surface-to-air missile battery from Moscow and is working with Russia on a nuclear power plant in Turkey.
Liberal justices suggest a whitewash as conservatives repudiate the decision upholding internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
"Given the investigation’s focus on President Trump’s campaign, even a blind person can see that the true target of the Special Counsel’s investigation is President Trump, not defendant, and that defendant’s prosecution is part of that larger plan," the judge wrote.
Trump, however, is pressing forward, questioning why we even have immigration judges and wondering about the need for due process.
The country will be dealing with the consequences of his outrageous stunt for decades to come.
Writing in dissent, Justice Sotomayor ... exposes the hypocrisy of the majority’s position to devastating effect. Sotomayor writes that, just weeks ago, in a 7-2 decision, the court ruled in favor of a baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission expressed animus toward the baker’s religious beliefs.
But the outburst also reflected a president grappling with the effect of policies he expected to produce a more favorable outcome, say trade experts.
Trump is not handling Harley-Davidson’s post-tariffs announcement well.
Day 522
Monday 25 June 2018
About 20 people ... marched about a block to Miller's CityCenterDC apartment building, handing flyers to spectators along the way. Miller ... was not home when the protesters arrived.
The company sold about 40,000 new motorbikes last year in Europe, equivalent to a sixth of its worldwide sales, making the region its most important market after the United States.
The president doesn’t think due-process protections should apply to undocumented immigrants.
The E.P.A. chief is being investigated for retaliating against at least a half dozen employees for questioning his scams.
In other words, the Supreme Court is a key component of the GOP election-rigging project.
Now, in Perez, Gorsuch has joined Justice Clarence Thomas’ crusade to hobble the law even further by holding that it does not prohibit racial gerrymandering.
Thomas and Gorsuch added they do not believe the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting.
Prince, America’s most famous private military contractor, acknowledged last week that he “cooperated” with Mueller’s investigation
One can’t mention the current debate over “civility” in American politics without highlighting the role that President Trump’s approach to the political dialogue plays.
It is apparent as the Democratic Party gradually sheds Michelle Obama's declaration that “When they go low, we go high” and trading it for “We fight fire with fire.”
The Constitution could get in the way of Trump's plans to cut legal corners
Under the plan, however, those children will keep waiting in custody, with reunifications only happening once the parents' deportation proceedings are completed.
...the burden will fall heaviest on the working-class, rural white voters on whom President Trump has staked the future of their party.
Red Hen’s last inspection was completed on Feb. 6, 2018, when it received a clean bill of health with no violations or required follow up visits.
Day 521
Sunday 24 June 2018
Day 520
Saturday 23 June 2018
Trump has declared that North Korea still poses an “extraordinary threat” to the United States, just days after saying that the country’s nuclear program no longer constituted a danger.
Day 519
Friday 22 June 2018
The implicit and uncomfortable point was clear ... : You either support indefinite family separation at the border or you support the murder and reckless manslaughter of U.S. citizens by drunk, sadistic illegal aliens.
Trump’s tariff on steel imports that took effect June 1 has caused a southeast Missouri nail manufacturer to lose about 50% of its business in two weeks.
It’s worthing noting that, before Trump triggered a trade war, U.S. exports to the E.U. faced an average tariff of just 3 percent
The figure would mean undocumented immigrants, who account for roughly 3 percent of the population, would have to commit about one quarter of the nation's homicides.
The bogus figure appears to have originated in a May 2006 post by Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa complaining about the “Day Without An Immigrant” campaign
“I literally got the other day, ‘Thanks but no thanks. Just Googled you and it said you were a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. Go fuck yourself’”
As Sinclair moved to acquire Tribune, it kept running into FCC rules. Rules Ajit Pai was more than happy to systematically remove at every step in perfect synchronicity with Sinclair's ambition.
If the hearing goes forward as scheduled, Papadopoulos could become the second defendant sentenced in Mueller’s investigation
The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers.
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,”
As the plot in the United States is slowly exposed, a remarkably similar one in the United Kingdom is quickly surfacing.
As you may recall, Kobach made the poor decision to personally represent his office in a lawsuit challenging a voter-ID law, and let’s just say that ignoring the court’s rulings wasn’t the only mistake he made at trial.
With Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facilities already at or near capacity, the order requires the Secretary of Defense to make “any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families” and to ”construct such facilities if necessary.”
The so-called "compromise" legislation -- constructed by House Speaker Paul Ryan to make moderates and conservative happy -- was already on life support before Trump came in and pulled the plug.
Day 518
Thursday 21 June 2018
Sinclair Broadcasting Group is the largest owner of local television news stations in the United States.
The Hastert rule is a nakedly anti-democratic, nakedly partisan, and nakedly destructive.
[Denis Hernández, the girl's father]... said he was told on Wednesday that the girl and her mother are in a Texas holding facility together.
Canadian border guards have been screening travellers using a huge, secretive US anti-terrorism database that is almost never referred to publicly
Mrs. Trump did not wear it while visiting with the children, but she did wear it upon her return to the capital, in full view of the news photographers who had gathered to capture her arrival.
Until Trump signed the order on Wednesday, the administration was insisting that it didn’t have a policy of separating families (false), that several laws and court rulings were forcing these separations (false), that Democrats were to blame (false), that only Congress could stop family separations (false) and that an executive order wouldn’t get the job done.
...more the double the number previously given by the Department of Homeland Security.
...the House of Representatives is set to vote on two comprehensive immigration bills — the conservative Goodlatte bill and a more moderate GOP bill
Stone, however, pushed back that he is "concerned" about being charged, noting that would suggest culpability.
Yesterday ... a news and opinion site ... published Miller's personal cell phone number.
Once again this week, President Donald Trump appeared to throw a wrench into the immigration debate on Capitol Hill
Day 517
Wednesday 20 June 2018
But for the children already separated from their parents after crossing the border, the Department of Health and Human Services was unclear Wednesday night on how or whether they would be reunited with their families, despite Trump's executive order.
Cohen just withdrew as a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The profligate public spending is a far cry from Pruitt’s political rhetoric. Announcing his bid for lieutenant governor of Oklahoma in 2006, Pruitt asked supporters to join him to “reverse our course and embrace fiscal conservative principles.”
Critics accuse Santiago of weakening the bill on behalf of the telecommunications industry. He received at least $54,000 from the industry since the 2016 election.
...after posting an incorrect graphic stating that Trump’s former campaign chief Paul Manafort had pleaded “guilty to 5 charges of manslaughter.”
The erroneous lower-third graphic appeared for approximately seven seconds during a special report on Wednesday
...after a public uproar over the impact of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
It’s about how to live in a world where these sorts of action-movie entertainments seem, increasingly, to influence politics and policy, until the two swallow each other.
...the Trump administration has instigated two major efforts to effectively do what Congress could not do earlier this year -- repeal Obamacare.
Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care.
But a top aide said Trump "doesn't want to look weak" by backing down.
Lewandowski was roundly and swiftly criticized. Many called his response heartless and said it reflected the lack of empathy inherent in the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy
The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, ... far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings.
Day 516
Tuesday 19 June 2018
Protesters crashed her meal, yelling “shame!” and “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace!” while Nielsen appeared to look down at her phone before eventually exiting the restaurant.
A previously inconspicuous blog post on Microsoft’s corporate Web site ... has ignited workplace frustrations at Microsoft over the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies. T
“When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away”
Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. shorted stock in a shipping firm — an investment tactic for profiting if share prices fall — days after learning that reporters were preparing a potentially negative story about his dealings with the Kremlin-linked company.
...was escorted from the FBI building Friday as a disciplinary process plays out
For example, Chinese officials could slow the customs process for U.S. products entering the country, launch investigations into or spring inspections onto factories, hotels or other businesses — all activities for which a veneer of plausible deniability would make proving a punitive motive difficult.
Trump threatened on Monday to hit $200 billion of Chinese imports with 10 percent tariffs if Beijing retaliated against his previous targeting of $50 billion in imports
Trump said on Tuesday that Canadians were smuggling shoes across the border “because the tariffs are so massive.” But under Nafta, Canada does not charge a tariff on American shoe imports.
Like Mitchell, Tomi Lahren attempted to shift the onus for the separations back onto the true villains, the desperate asylum seekers.
The governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island asserted their opposition by declaring that they will withhold or recall troops from the United States’ border with Mexico
It also comes as the United States faces intense criticism for detaining children separated from their immigrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Giuliani told Politico he made the comments simply because “That’s what I’m supposed to do.” “What am I supposed to say? That they should investigate him forever? Sorry, I’m not a sucker”
Prince, a billionaire and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has also lobbied for a massive overhaul of the way the Afghanistan War is being prosecuted
While some officials have advocated the policy as being necessary to deter illegal immigration, others have shied away from even describing it as a policy.
...that will enable millions of Americans to buy skimpy health insurance plans that do not comply with key Obamacare coverage requirements, marking its latest effort to chip away at the healthcare law.
Wall Street has tried to ignore warning signs about a trade war for months. It can't any longer.
The false claims come as the president — emboldened by fewer disciplinarians inside the West Wing — indulges in frequent Twitter screeds.
“Are we really going to sit here, 70 members of the Congress of the United States of America, in 2018, and have a hearing . . . on Hillary Clinton’s emails?”
Border Patrol officers have apparently been telling parents that they’re just taking their kids away to bathe, only for the parents to realize hours later the kids are never coming back. This is the exact same thing concentration camp guards told people before being taken to gas chambers to stop them from panicking
“It’s a real exaggeration. In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.”
At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents.
In the letter, the group of churchgoers, including clergy and church leadership, accuse Sessions of child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of the doctrine of the United Methodist Church.
Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.
Day 515
Monday 18 June 2018
...immigration authorities cannot say what procedures exist to reunite children with their parents after the parents' illegal-entry cases have been resolved but their immigration case is still pending.
... rejecting a deal President Donald Trump made with Beijing to save the firm.
He faces a felony charge of “super aggravated sexual assault of a child,” which carries a minimum prison sentence of 25 years
But among Republicans, there is majority support for the policy that has resulted in an uptick of children being separated from their families.
“Consistent with President Trump’s commitment and in concert with our Republic of Korea ally, the United States military has suspended all planning for this August’s defensive ‘war game’”
"We are going to have the Air Force, and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal"
The court instead kicked the can down the road.
Trump remained resistant on Monday..., repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals — not parents — were toting juveniles to the United States.
When we were children, my two siblings and I were also taken from our parents. And the problems we’ve experienced since then portend the terrible things that many of these children are bound to suffer.
“These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now—do not fall for it, Mr. President. I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV,” Coulter said.
...the chain-link fences used to separate detainees were simply "partitions"
...the so-called cages look "more like a security pen to me."
...the government is "very uncomfortable" with the term "cages" being used to describe its facilities, but the agency admitted that the term is "not inaccurate."
One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn’t know because the child’s aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl’s diaper.
The Texas facility is known as Ursula, though immigrants are reportedly calling it La Perrera - dog kennel in Spanish - in reference to the cages used to hold children and adults
Day 514
Sunday 17 June 2018
The reality is that, at the urging of anti-immigration diehard Stephen Miller, Trump put into place a system that his predecessors had rejected as inhumane. His clear-eyed strategy is to use the separated children as pawns to extract concessions from Democrats on an immigration package that would include money for Trump’s border wall and cuts to legal immigration, among other measures.
One of the few remaining staffers from Trump's 2016 campaign, Miller also writes the president's biggest speeches, including Trump's first State of the Union address.
Mrs. Bush, the last Republican first lady, spoke out forcefully against the practice on Sunday in a rare foray into domestic politics, comparing it to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
"The summit was much more show than substance — what the Texans call 'all cattle, no hat,' " Schumer said, mixing up the common expression.
Stone and Caputo’s interactions with Greenberg mean that at least 11 Trump associates or campaign officials have acknowledged interactions with a Russian during the election season or presidential transition.
Day 513
Saturday 16 June 2018
Her surprise selection to head the CFPB would ensure that Mulvaney ... continues to have influence over the agency created in the wake of the financial crisis.
The newspaper that serves as the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party had four words to describe the Trump administration on Saturday: rude, unreasonable, selfish and headstrong.
"I then told him something that was natural to say in the moment, but that I immediately regretted. ... I told him not to worry, everything will be alright," Moore said. "I really wish I hadn't said that, because I'm not sure it's true."
"The media will broadcast these images of brutality and chaos and the public will associate them with the Republicans that run the House and the Senate — but most of all with President Trump."
Miller argued that bringing back “zero tolerance” would be a potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping migrants from flooding across the border.
So why has nothing changed if this policy is so heinous that no one outside of Jeff Sessions wants credit for it? Because it's a way for Trump to get what he wants. He's already tweeted that he's willing to hold literal child hostages to force Democrats to support his immigration demands, like a border wall and an end to immigration policies that allow family reunification.
His comments are the latest example of his asking the public to discount what it sees with its own eyes and instead believe his own self-serving version of reality.
In fact, there is no law that requires families to be separated at the border.
The statement explicitly called out Sessions as a "fellow United Methodist," asking him to reverse the decision to split up families.
They appear to recognize that tethering themselves to Donald Trump—a thrice-married man who has bragged about committing adultery, lies with impunity, allegedly paid hush money to a porn star with whom he had an affair, and says he has never asked God for forgiveness—places the moral credibility of the Southern Baptist Convention at risk.
In the end, what this summit achieved was have the US president indirectly legitimise a notorious dictator.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigrants within the U.S. who tell immigration officials they’re afraid to return to their countries have the right to request asylum and to be immediately processed.
Day 512
Friday 15 June 2018
“Approximately 731 pages of messages, including call logs,” were found on those apps and were turned over to Cohen’s lawyers on Friday to be reviewed for potentially privileged materials like attorney-client communications, as well as “highly personal” information
A host of a news show on state-run channel Russia 24 declared "Crimea is ours! Trump is ours!" following a report that US President Donald Trump suggested Crimea is part of Russia.
After a daylong, dizzying back-and-forth over Trump’s position, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump misunderstood a question on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning when he argued he would not sign a “moderate” immigration proposal scheduled for a vote next week.
The number represents a dramatic uptick from the nearly 1,800 family separations that Reuters reported had happened from October 2016 through February of this year.
China will hit back by imposing its own tariffs, the country’s Ministry of Commerce said in a release. The statement was not specific about which goods would be targeted, but the list is likely to include agricultural products and manufactured goods
On Friday afternoon, Trump complained the judge’s decision to jail Manafort was “very unfair.”
Sending the former Trump campaign chairman to jail could boost the pressure on him to cut a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
The possibility of a pardon from President Donald Trump has also altered the typical plea-negotiation dynamic
These allegations, of course, are absolutely false. There is simply no law or court order that requires the U.S. government to snatch children, including babies and toddlers, from their parents.
Trump on Friday said he would not sign a carefully crafted GOP bill addressing the predicament of Dreamers, news that caught House Republicans by surprise
There is no law that determines children must be taken away from their parents when they cross the border.
Trump on Friday morning observed that Fox & Friends was filming on the White House lawn and announced that he would make an “unannounced visit” down to speak with his favorite morning cable show.
Tariffs that affect more than 800 products worth $34bn in annual trade are due to come into effect on 6 July.
Pruitt’s troubles with farmers have nothing to do with his never-ending ethics scandals, and instead stem from accusations that he’s weakening an ethanol mandate that provides a lifeline to corn growers
After Singapore, the President is pressing ahead with the meeting that he’s always wanted.
Day 511
Thursday 14 June 2018
"I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves."
At one point, after watching North Korean television, which is entirely state-run, the president talked about how positive the female North Korean news anchor was toward Kim, according to two people familiar with his remarks. He joked that even the administration-friendly Fox News was not as lavish in its praise as the state TV anchor, one of the people added, and that maybe she should get a job on U.S. television, instead.
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right?” asked a top F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page, in one text. “Right?!”
Peter Strzok, the agent overseeing the F.B.I.’s investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, answered, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Inside, it is clean, massive and brightly lit. Not far from the entrance, there is a large mural of President Trump, an American flag and the White House, with a quote from Mr. Trump: “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”
New York prosecutors have accused the president and his kids of “persistently illegal conduct” related to the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
A series of outbursts in Thursday’s White House briefings follows weeks of increasing strain.
Drawing on an American history of cruelty, from the conquest of the Indians to the slave trade to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, activists in this city gathered on Thursday to voice outrage at what they see as the latest affront to American values by the Trump administration
The DOJ IG report blasted Comey for this statement, saying he “insinuated that hostile foreign actors may have in fact gained access to former Secretary Clinton’s private email account, based almost entirely on speculation and without any evidence”
Cohen has expressed anger with the treatment he has gotten from the President, who has minimized his relationship with Cohen
Cohen's split from Stephen Ryan and co-counsel Todd Harrison could signal a change in legal strategy but does not necessarily indicate that Cohen has decided to cut a deal with federal prosecutors.
“I’m not trying to be gratuitous or unfair but isn’t saluting a General from an enemy military sort of a big deal?”
“We are going to get the complete denuclearization,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters. “Only then will there be relief from sanctions.”
The apparent plan is to discredit Cohen by arguing that whatever compromising information he might share about Trump is a lie, concocted to please Mueller's band of witch hunters and save his own skin.
The individuals are Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager, both former journalists based in Europe.
“I could say ‘Would you do me a favor? Would you get out of Syria?’ ‘Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine? You shouldn’t be there. Just come on,” he said.
With no explanation or warning, the president now supports an effort to nullify the provisions that make it possible for millions of people to purchase affordable insurance.
Day 510
Wednesday 13 June 2018
But, like “Episode I,” we've reached a point where people care less about the long-term advantages the system provides and more about the short-term ones it prevents them from getting. They want to be able to alter the deal, and force you to pray that they don't alter it any further. In other words, to bully their way to a better one.
“Yeah, but so have other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”
For his part, the Trump attorney has been frustrated by the lack of outreach by the president, whom Cohen has vowed to defend, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Ryan told reporters that the “last thing I want to do is bring a bill out of here that I know the president won’t support.”
“Barack Obama catering to the world’s dictators is literally the Neville Chamberlain of our time,” Hannity said in 2010. The conservative host, who reportedly communicates with Trump regularly, also said in 2013: “It’s not wise. It’s not in our best interest. We’re dealing with the world’s worst dictators and we’re showing a lot of weakness.”
His all-is-resolved description seemed to fly in the face of decades of hostility, unkept promises, and the widespread belief, shared by U.S. intelligence agencies, that North Korea would never give up the nuclear weapons it sought for so long.
While the U.S. has yet to confirm the contents of the reports, they suggest that the two leaders reached more verbal agreements than they put on paper, and made public.
Day 509
Tuesday 12 June 2018
"Manafort’s own words establish the falsity of his representation that the Hapsburg group was 'European-focused'"
Rosenstein has butted heads with House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes for months over a subpoena for documents related to the Russia investigation, but the battle spilled out into public view Tuesday after Fox News reported staff on the committee felt "personally attacked" at a meeting with Rosenstein in January.
In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.
The president, a harsh critic of Time Warner-owned CNN, took aim at the deal when it was announced in the weeks before his election.
He said he was trying to send a signal of strength on behalf of the administration, but that his language was inappropriate.
The floor votes will effectively stop the effort by moderate Republicans in tandem with Democrats to force a vote on their immigration plans through a so-called discharge petition.
They called Obama an inexperienced, self-serving celebrity. Then their party chose Trump.
Pence told Senate Republicans Tuesday that some training exchanges and readiness training with South Korea will continue
You realize this paper ripping story is a violation of law, right?
In a statement released by his office, Moon praised the summit as a "great victory achieved by both the United States and the two Koreas."
If the individual mandate is stripped away, it argues, two other key parts of Obamacare should necessarily fall with it. Those provisions are called guaranteed issue and community rating.
Peter Navarro says he was wrong to say there was ‘special place in hell’ for leaders like Justin Trudeau who cross Trump
Mueller warned that Russian intelligence services still have active “interference operations” into U.S. elections and that handing over certain evidence in a criminal case could imperil ongoing investigations.
In Washington, officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House were scrambling to figure out exactly the impact of Mr. Trump’s comments.
Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.
In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.
Despite insisting he had given up nothing in meeting with Kim, Trump did make what could be considered a major concession by saying the US and South Korea would halt joint war games, and he did so using North Korean rhetoric.
But there were scant details on what new commitments had been secured from Kim, even as Trump announced he would end the regular military exercises the US conducts with South Korea.
Day 508
Monday 11 June 2018
The filings show how the couple are collecting immense sums from other enterprises while serving in the White House, an extraordinary income flow that ethics experts have warned could create potential conflicts of interests.
Inexplicably, these foreigners are not putting America First. That’s why Trump needs to quit the group and make his own G-8
...pitting the president against Congress on what many senators say is an issue of national security.
Sessions’s ruling vacated a 2016 decision by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals that said an abused woman from El Salvador was eligible for asylum.
Secretive leader also believed to have brought his own food to historic meeting
The U.S. president lavished praise on Kim but did not secure a detailed path toward denuclearization.
This feels like something from a William Gibson cyberpunk dystopia novel, where the government has become so weak and useless, private corporations have been taking over the basic upkeep of the nation.
The law allows the state to strike voters from the registration rolls if they fail to return a mailed address confirmation form, and don't vote for another four years, or two federal election cycles.
Canada has every right to be insulted that Mr. Trump would invoke national security in their trade dispute. Canada has stood with the United States in every modern war and crisis.
...following a third superseding indictment against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that lodged additional charges on accusations of witness tampering.
Enacted in 2015, the rules sought to stop providers giving preferential treatment to sites and services that paid them to accelerate their data.
Day 507
Sunday 10 June 2018
The president's unofficial 'filing system' involves tearing up documents into pieces, even when they're supposed to be preserved.
"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," White House adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday on Fox News.
“Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators, what we are seeing right now ― this is history,” she continued.
It had already been an extremely tense G7 meeting. Just before showing up late, President Trump had suggested Russia rejoin the alliance... He had harangued world leaders over their supposedly unfair trade practices, disrupted a women’s empowerment meeting, and generally acted as a one-man diplomatic wrecking ball.
Day 506
Saturday 9 June 2018
Trump said Saturday evening that he had instructed U.S. officials to withdraw support for a joint statement with other member nations he had backed just hours earlier,
The president touted great relationships with other G-7 leaders — but then abruptly reversed on signing a joint statement and lashed out at the Canadian prime minister.
Texas and six other states are suing the federal government to dismantle the immigration policy, which was put in place by the Obama administration in 2012.
Merkel hovers over Trump in the photo as the U.S. president sits defensively with his arms crossed and a look of aversion plastered on his face.
But there were numerous signs here that leaders of other countries stood their ground, having stiffened after months of attacks and insults.
Trump caused quite a commotion, arriving 17 minutes late as remarks were already underway.
Though President Trump has vehemently denied the property was ever operated as a brothel, history suggests otherwise.
Day 505
Friday 8 June 2018
One of Russia’s principal foreign-policy goals for decades has been to split the United States from is allies. Whether by accident or by design, President Trump appears intent on bringing that dream to fruition.
The President also reiterated his belief that he has the power to pardon himself, though he again said he would not do so.
“Seizing a journalist’s records sends a terrible message to the public and should never be considered except as the last resort in a truly essential investigation”
‘I don’t think I have to prepare very much’ for the upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un, Trump says. Here’s how we ended up with president who’s all gut, no knowledge.
...including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020
The indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Washington marked the first such charges for Manafort’s associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to be in Moscow
Day 504
Thursday 7 June 2018
...in what it described as "just the beginning" of a crackdown on "political Islam" and foreign-funded Islamic communities.
"I don't believe Mrs. Trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with Mr. Giuliani"
A former Senate Intelligence Committee aide was arrested on Thursday in an investigation of classified information leaks where prosecutors also secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records.
The Trump administration told a federal court on Thursday that it would no longer defend crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect consumers with pre-existing medical conditions.
Trump signaled that a grand bargain to reverse decades of enmity is not on the table for his unprecedented meeting with Kim on Tuesday in Singapore, but the president sounded upbeat as he described the North Korean leader as sincere about remaking the future for his impoverished country.
The party is divided over two very different approaches on immigration. Conservatives have been agitating for months for a vote on hard-line immigration
At the same time, frustrated moderate Republicans — many of whom represent the battleground districts that will determine control of the House this November — began working with Democrats last month on a discharge petition to force a vote on the floor.
The move eases a seven-year ban on ZTE buying American parts, which Commerce levied in April.
Mr. Trump is the black sheep of this family, the estranged sibling who decided to pick fights with his relatives just before arriving to dinner. The dispute ... is “much like a family quarrel,” but with the potential for vast diplomatic and economic consequences for the world.
Day 503
Wednesday 6 June 2018
One of the few things that Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage.
While the hawkish Bolton ... is expected to be in Singapore for the talks on Tuesday, Pompeo has taken the lead as the administration assumes a softer tone toward Pyongyang ahead of the summit
The Social Security program’s costs will exceed its income this year for the first time since 1982, forcing the program to dip into its nearly $3 trillion trust fund to cover benefits.
The peculiar Alabama law dates to an era “when county jails were more of a mom and pop operation and feeding inmates was often the responsibility of a sheriff’s wife”
...saying the two men "colluded" and "acted in concert" to "manipulate" Daniels and to benefit Trump.
After years working on North Korea at the Central Intelligence Agency, Andrew Kim has been cast into the spotlight accompanying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in key meetings with Pyongyang officials.
The departures come as Mr. Pruitt faces fresh questions about his management decisions.
“Rather than saying, you know that was a mistake, I shouldn’t have done that, or, it was totally innocent or saying nothing, he tries to defend it by touting the excellence of Chick-fil-A as a franchise. It’s as if he just doesn’t care”
Trudeau pressed Trump on how he could justify the tariffs as a "national security" issue. In response, Trump quipped to Trudeau, "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?" referring to the War of 1812.
The problem with Trump's comments to Trudeau is that British troops burned down the White House during the War of 1812. ...in retaliation for the American attack on York, Ontario ... which was then a British colony.
...turning the closed-door discussion into soliloquies on his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party’s fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Fotiadis did not respond to a call or an email. But eight hours later, he announced on Twitter that he was closing his firm, John Fotiadis Architect, or JFA, after 10 years in business. A few days later, Fotiadis closed the Twitter account he had used to announce he was closing down his firm.
Facebook has data-sharing partnerships with four Chinese device makers, including Huawei.
The cheese moment was so short, so small, so otherwise insignificant, but also so large and so important, and I can’t stop watching it or wondering what it means.
Day 502
Tuesday 5 June 2018
Although the players said they were demonstrating against police brutality in black communities, Trump criticized them for disrespecting the flag, sparking a fierce public debate. No Eagles players had participated in anthem protests, however.
The proposal could fizzle quickly. Chinese officials have said publicly that any agreements would be void if the United States continued with plans to impose tariffs and other restrictions
Honeywell, GE, Dover among the companies shutting down presence before sanctions start to bite
On Tuesday, yet another story was published about ethically dubious actions by Scott Pruitt
...will have the added benefit of keeping Democrats desperate to keep their Senate seats off the campaign trail for a month of prime campaign time.
McConnell announced Tuesday the Senate will skip much of its treasured August recess to press ahead confirming the President's nominees and passing government spending bills.
At least three congressional candidates running as Republicans are doing so explicitly to promote white nationalist and anti-Semitic platforms.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Manafort, prosecutors, witnesses and others to be prepared to appear and to testify on June 15
The rights office said in a statement that "children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents' migration status. Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation."
Day 501
Monday 4 June 2018
Less than 24 hours before the players were expected to arrive in the Rose Garden, Trump said he would celebrate with fans only because some members of the team were skipping the ceremony in protest of him.
“You said last August that the president did not dictate the statement about the Trump Tower meeting during the campaign, but the lawyers wrote to the special counsel that the president did dictate the statement,” a reporter said, and then asked, “what’s the reason for that discrepancy?”
So. In less than a year, we have gone from a) the President was aware of "nothing" about the statement to b) he "weighed in" like any father would to c) he dictated the entire statement.
Hupp’s search for a discount “Trump Home Luxury Plush Euro Pillow Top” mattress, which she detailed in a recent interview with congressional investigators, was one of several unusual tasks she performed for the administrator.
Jackson faces a slew of allegations that he drank on the job, overprescribed medications and created a hostile work environment.
By invoking the specter of a self-pardon, the president and his defenders are implicitly suggesting that only Congress can constrain an executive's lawless behavior.
A court appointed watchdog ... released an initial report Monday which found that relatively few documents in an initial tranche of documents that were seized from Cohen in a raid met the standard of being subject to attorney client privilege.
The German government demanded a formal explanation from the United States on Monday of what, exactly, the new U.S. ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, meant when he promised to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe.
‘Don't just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.’
Mueller ... asked the judge overseeing the case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to revoke or revise an order releasing Manafort ahead of his trial.
Wife? What wife? I never had a wife -- Donald "No Wife" Trump (NO WIFE)
Even if I was the Queens Strangler (NO DNA EVIDENCE!) I cannot go to jail because the "Constitution" does not apply to Emmy nominees. SOYBEAN PRICES FALLING!
Day 500
Sunday 3 June 2018
“If the United States introduces trade measures, including an increase of tariffs, all the economic and trade outcomes negotiated by the two parties will not take effect,” China said in a statement
Day 499
Saturday 2 June 2018
Rather than sticking with the demand that North Korea disarm immediately, Mr. Trump opened the door to a prolonged freeze on the North’s existing nuclear capability, with vague declarations that disarmament will follow. That is essentially the deal Mr. Clinton embarked on with Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
The Times obtained copies of a confidential letter sent by President Trump’s lawyers to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Reporters added context in annotations.
Day 498
Friday 1 June 2018
The president and his movement are empowered by ugly talk—the most effective rejoinders are factually precise and emotionally restrained.
...but he now anticipates a more drawn-out negotiation than once envisioned and indicated that he will stop increasing pressure on the regime while talks proceed.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis harshly criticized the Chinese government on Saturday for its continuing militarization of a string of islands in the South China Sea
First lady Melania Trump isn't accompanying the President to Camp David this weekend, marking the 22nd day since she was last seen publicly.
"We will now trigger a dispute settlement case at the WTO, since the U.S. measures on steel and aluminum clearly go against agreed international rules"
Mexico has adopted a poised and consistent stance in its responses, one it has refined over the course of the two years that Mr. Trump has lashed out at the country with insults and threats
Dear customers, Please take a look at the instructions for our modernised products.
While the White House brushed off any notion that Mr. Trump had crossed a line, legal experts said the tweet raised possible insider trading concerns and economists said it was a blatant misuse of presidential power.