Category: Policies

Trump team halts rules meant to protect students from predatory for-profit colleges

The Trump administration is suspending two key rules from the Obama administration that were intended to protect students from predatory for-profit colleges, saying it will soon start the process to write its own regulations.

The move made Wednesday by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was a victory for Republican lawmakers and for-profit colleges that had lobbied against the rules. Critics denounced it, accusing the administration of essentially selling out students to help for-profit colleges stay in business.

The Education Department released a statement saying that it was going to create new committees to rewrite rules covering borrower defense to repaying, or BDR, and gainful employment. BDR relieves students of all federal loans if a school used illegal or deceptive tactics to persuade students to borrow money to attend. Gainful employment requires that action be taken — including possible expulsion from the federal student aid program — against vocational programs whose graduates leave with heavy student loan debt. Ninety-eight percent of the programs that officials found to have failed to meet those standards are offered by for-profit colleges.

Parts of the gainful employment rule are already in effect. BDR was set to become effective July 1 but will now be postponed. The Education Department said that while new rules are drawn up, it will process applications under the current borrower defense rules.

A program is considered to lead to “gainful employment” if the annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of their total earnings. Exceeding those debt-to-earnings rates means possible expulsion from the federal student aid program.

DeVos criticized the regulations that were approved by the Obama administration, saying that they are unfair to students and schools and that they leave taxpayers with a big bill.

“Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable,” she said in her department’s statement. “Unfortunately, last year’s rule-making effort missed an opportunity to get it right. The result is a muddled process that’s unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs. It’s time to take a step back and make sure these rules achieve their purpose: helping harmed students. It’s time for a regulatory reset. It is the department’s aim, and this administration’s commitment, to protect students from predatory practices while also providing clear, fair and balanced rules for colleges and universities to follow.”

The American Federation of Teachers pushed back against the decision.

“The Trump administration’s actions today show that the White House stands with predatory for-profit schools, not the students they rip off,” it said in a statement. “About the only thing worse than ripping off students with worthless degrees from for-profit colleges is denying them help to relieve their substantial debt, and allowing the schools to continue to prey on students. Given that for-profit colleges were big donors to Trump and other Republican candidates, one wonders whether this is simply a new pay-to-play scheme at the expense of our students, including our veterans, who are much helped by the rules Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to eliminate.”

Not everyone in higher education opposed the administration’s move, however. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the United Negro College Fund and the National Assn. for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education — which represent historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs — sent a letter to DeVos this week urging her to put a hold on the implementation of the regulations and reconsider them.

“We remain concerned about the sweeping scope of the regulation and vague standards for determining ‘misrepresentation’ that could unfairly leave HBCUs and PBIs liable for frivolous claims, unwarranted fines, and unfounded penalties,” they said in the letter. “Such provisions could result in significant costs that would divert precious resources better spent on serving the needs of students.”

The nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and the Project on Predatory Student Lending smacked DeVos’ move, saying in a statement that she had “put the profit margins of for-profit colleges ahead of the interests of students and their families” in “a craven attempt to avoid the agency’s legal obligation” to enforce the rules. The statement cited a part of the Obama-era rules that included a ban on the use of forced arbitration clauses in many student enrollment contracts:

“These clauses require students to submit any dispute that might later arise between the students and the institution to binding arbitration, a private process with little right to appeal, instead of a court of law. The rules also provide new and long-needed protections for students asserting defenses against repayment of their federal loans based on fraud or other misconduct by the students’ schools.”

[The Los Angeles Times]

Trump Administration Quietly Rolls Back Civil Rights Efforts Across Federal Government

For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious.

Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency’s approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.

“At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

Consent decrees have not been abandoned entirely by the DOJ, a person with knowledge of the instructions said. Instead, there is a presumption against their use — attorneys should default to using settlements without court oversight unless there is an unavoidable reason for a consent decree. The instructions came from the civil rights division’s office of acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. There is no written policy guidance.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for the DOJ, declined to comment for this story.

Consent decrees can be a powerful tool, and spell out specific steps that must be taken to remedy the harm. These are agreed to by both parties and signed off on by a judge, whom the parties can appear before again if the terms are not being met. Though critics say the DOJ sometimes does not enforce consent decrees well enough, they are more powerful than settlements that aren’t overseen by a judge and have no built-in enforcement mechanism.

Such settlements have “far fewer teeth to ensure adequate enforcement,” Gupta said.

Consent decrees often require agencies or municipalities to take expensive steps toward reform. Local leaders and agency heads then can point to the binding court authority when requesting budget increases to ensure reforms. Without consent decrees, many localities or government departments would simply never make such comprehensive changes, said William Yeomans, who spent 26 years at the DOJ, mostly in the civil rights division.

“They are key to civil rights enforcement,” he said. “That’s why Sessions and his ilk don’t like them.”

Some, however, believe the Obama administration relied on consent decrees too often and sometimes took advantage of vulnerable cities unable to effectively defend themselves against a well-resourced DOJ.

“I think a recalibration would be welcome,” said Richard Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, adding that consent decrees should be used in cases where clear, systemic issues of discrimination exist.

Though it’s too early to see how widespread the effect of the changes will be, the Justice Department appears to be adhering to the directive already.

On May 30, the DOJ announced Bernards Township in New Jersey had agreed to pay $3.25 million to settle an accusation it denied zoning approval for a local Islamic group to build a mosque. Staff attorneys at the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey initially sought to resolve the case with a consent decree, according to a spokesperson for Bernards Township. But because of the DOJ’s new stance, the terms were changed after the township protested, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office declined comment.

Sessions has long been a public critic of consent decrees. As a senator, he wrote they “constitute an end run around the democratic process.” He lambasted local agencies that seek them out as a way to inflate their budgets, a “particularly offensive” use of consent decrees that took decision-making power from legislatures.

On March 31, Sessions ordered a sweeping review of all consent decrees with troubled police departments nationwide to ensure they were in line with the Trump administration’s law-and-order goals. Days before, the DOJ had asked a judge to postpone a hearing on a consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department that had been arranged during the last days of the Obama administration. The judge denied that request, and the consent decree has moved forward.

The DOJ has already come under fire from critics for altering its approach to voting rights cases. After nearly six years of litigation over Texas’ voter ID law — which Obama DOJ attorneys said was written to intentionally discriminate against minority voters and had such a discriminatory effect — the Trump DOJ abruptly withdrew its intent claims in late February.

[ProPublica]

Trump Deports Iraqi Christians, Breaking His Promise

President Donald Trump is facing anger and potential political blowback as his administration ramps up efforts to deport Iraqi Christians, a group he’d pledged to protect from what the U.S. calls a genocide in the Middle East.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents over the weekend detained dozens of Iraqi Christians and others to send back to Iraq. Many of them were picked up in Michigan, a swing state that Trump barely won in 2016 and the home of a sizable number of Christians from Muslim-majority countries who backed Trump during the presidential campaign.

The deportation effort has alarmed lawmakers who have tried to raise awareness about the plight of Chaldean and other Christian communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Those communities have struggled to survive under the reign of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Removing the detainees from the United States “represents a death sentence should they be deported to Iraq or Syria,” Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who has family and religious links to the Middle East, said in a statement.

Christian activists are scrambling to file legal challenges to the deportations and coordinate with sympathetic lawmakers. As the news has spread, so has the feeling that Trump has betrayed the affected Christian community, activists said.

“He promised he would help us, when in fact he’s exacerbated problems now by sending people back to the hands of the Islamic State,” said Steve Oshana, an Assyrian-Christian activist with the group A Demand for Action.

The crackdown is believed to be a result of disputes stemming from Trump’s executive orders that ban visitors and immigrants from several Muslim majority countries.

Initially, the so-called travel ban, which has been put on hold by the courts, included Iraq. But Iraq is reported to have gotten off the list by promising to accept people the U.S. wants deported. That means many Iraqis living in the U.S. who previously could not be deported for overstaying their visas, committing crimes, or other reasons can now be sent back.

Many of those detained had been checking in regularly with U.S. authorities for years as part of the conditions of their being allowed to stay in the United States, so immigration agents knew where to find them. There also were reports that some were detained while they were on their way to church Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security said it was just doing its job by pursuing the deportations, which had contributed to a backlog of cases. It did not release specifics on how many people were detained or where, but activists said at least 40 people were held, and that southeastern Michigan was the main focus of the weekend raids.

“The agency recently arrested a number of Iraqi nationals, all of whom had criminal convictions for crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, robbery, sex assault, weapons violations and other offenses,” DHS spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. “Each of these individuals received full and fair immigration proceedings, after which a federal immigration judge found them ineligible for any form of relief under U.S. law and ordered them removed.”

But Christian activists said many of the detainees had committed lower-level offenses, and that even those who had committed serious crimes had already been punished by the U.S. legal system, often many years before. Some of the detainees are believed to have grown up in the United States and can barely speak Arabic.

Nathan Kalasho, an Iraqi-American Christian activist in Michigan, said his group had been approached by a desperate 38-year-old woman of Iraqi Christian descent whose uncle has been serving as her bone marrow donor. He has been detained and is slated for deportation.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump captured the hearts of many Americans of Middle Eastern Christian descent through his tough anti-Islamist talk. Activists familiar with the community said many in it voted for Trump because they were convinced he would stop the decimation of their people in the Middle East.

Trump’s administration has kept up the pro-Christian, anti-Islamist rhetoric. Just last week, Vice President Mike Pence denounced the “genocide” being committed by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in regions where Christians have long lived.

“Christianity faces unprecedented threats in the land where it was given birth and an exodus unrivaled since the days of Moses,” Pence said during the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

The U.S. formally declared that the Islamic State was committing genocide against Christians and other groups last year under the Obama administration.

Trump’s efforts to impose a travel ban contributed to unease among Christians in the U.S. who trace their lineage to the Middle East. Even though the first attempt at the ban included references to giving admissions preference to religious minorities from the Middle East, the ban also halted the entry of refugees to the United States. Many refugees from the region are Christians.

But although the Trump administration has aggressively stepped up deportations of people illegally in the United States, few Christians from Iraq and other parts of the Middle East expected raids aimed at them.

“The support came from a fear in these communities,” said Philippe Nassif, executive director of In Defense of Christians. “These are people that are deeply traumatized. They latched onto his message of ‘We’re going to protect you.’”

[Politico]

Trump’s Cabinet Extols the ‘Blessing’ of Serving Him

One by one, they praised President Trump, taking turns complimenting his integrity, his message, his strength, his policies. Their leader sat smiling, nodding his approval.

“The greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people,” Mike Pence said, starting things off.

“I am privileged to be here — deeply honored — and I want to thank you for your commitment to the American workers,” said Alexander Acosta, the secretary of labor.

Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, had just returned from Mississippi and had a message to deliver. “They love you there,” he offered, grinning across the antique table at Mr. Trump.

Reince Priebus, the chief of staff whose job insecurity has been the subject of endless speculation, outdid them all, telling the president — and the assembled news cameras — “We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing to serve your agenda.”

So it went on Monday in the Cabinet Room of the White House, as Mr. Trump transformed a routine meeting of senior members of his government into a mood-boosting, ego-stroking display of support for himself and his agenda. While the president never explicitly asked to be praised, Mr. Pence set the worshipful tone, and Mr. Trump made it clear he liked what he heard.

“Thank you, Mick,” he told Mick Mulvaney, his budget director. “Good job,” he told Scott Pruitt, his E.P.A. chief. “Very good, Daniel,” he said to Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence.

The commander in chief, who has been known for decades as a fan of flattery and who speaks of himself in superlatives, even indulged in a bit of self-congratulation. He declared himself one of the most productive presidents in American history — perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt could come close, he conceded — and proclaimed that he had led a “record-setting pace” of accomplishment.

Never mind that Mr. Trump has yet to sign any major legislation, or that his White House has been buffeted by legal and ethical questions surrounding the investigation into his campaign’s possible links to Russia and his firing of the F.B.I. director who had been leading that inquiry.

The highly unusual spectacle before the cabinet meeting got down to business and the TV cameras were banished seemed designed to deflect attention from the president’s faltering agenda and the accusations leveled against him last week by the fired F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, which are threatening to further overshadow his agenda and haunt his presidency.

Days before, Mr. Comey had charged that Mr. Trump had lied about his firing and inappropriately sought to influence the Russia investigation. On Monday, the president said the country was “seeing amazing results” from his leadership.

“I will say that never has there been a president, with few exceptions — in the case of F.D.R. he had a major Depression to handle — who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ve been about as active as you can possibly be, and at a just about record-setting pace.”

The tableau in the Cabinet Room drew instant derision from critics. And within hours, Democrats had pounced.

In a video posted with the tweet, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, sat at a table with young staff members who, at his prompting, praised his performance on Sunday talk shows and the appearance of his hair. One repeated Mr. Priebus’s quotation word for word, prompting the senator and his aides to erupt into laughter.

Mr. Trump has been struggling with his legislative agenda. His effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act passed the House on a second try, but senators are toiling to put together their own version. And his administration is months away from unveiling either a major tax cut package or the sweeping infrastructure plan he has promised.

The endorsements from the administration’s highest officials may have served as a comforting counterpoint to Mr. Trump’s sinking poll numbers. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job he is doing as president, according to a June 11 Gallup tracking survey, with only 36 percent approving.

After his upbeat introductory remarks on Monday, the president went around the table asking for a statement from each cabinet member. One by one, they said their names and — as if working to outdo one another — paid homage to Mr. Trump, describing how honored they were to serve in his administration.

“Thank you for the opportunity to serve at S.B.A.,” said Linda McMahon, the administrator of the Small Business Administration, trumpeting “a new optimism” for small businesses.

Ben Carson, the housing secretary, called it “a great honor” to work for Mr. Trump, while Mr. Perdue offered congratulations for “the men and women you have gathered around this table.”

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, told Mr. Trump, “It was a great honor traveling with you around the country for the last year, and an even greater honor to be here serving on your cabinet.”

A few cabinet members diverged from the apparent script. Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense — whose reputation for independence has been a comfort to Mr. Trump’s critics — refrained from personally praising the president, instead aiming his comments at American troops fighting and dying for their country.

“Mr. President, it’s an honor to represent the men and women of the Department of Defense, and we are grateful for the sacrifices our people are making in order to strengthen our military so our diplomats always negotiate from a position of strength,” Mr. Mattis said as Mr. Trump sat, stern-faced.

But the meeting still struck White House officials of past administrations as odd.

“I ran 16 Cabinet meetings during Obama’s 1st term,” Chris Lu, former President Barack Obama’s cabinet secretary, wrote on Twitter. “Our Cabinet was never told to sing Obama’s praises. He wanted candid advice not adulation.”

The show of support for the president was in keeping with an intense effort by the White House to boost Mr. Trump’s mood and change the subject from Mr. Comey’s damaging testimony last week.

In a television interview on Monday morning, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump said her father “felt vindicated” and was eager to move on and talk about the rest of his agenda. Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” she said that “he feels incredibly optimistic.”

Reporters who witnessed the cabinet meeting’s prelude tried in vain to ask the president about his comments about Mr. Comey — specifically, whether he has tapes of their conversations, as he has hinted.

But Mr. Trump was in no mood to allow such questions to rain on his parade, and he dismissed the news media with a curt “thank you.”

“Finally held our first full @Cabinet meeting today,” he tweeted later, along with a video of the meeting-turned-pep-rally. “With this great team, we can restore American prosperity and bring real change to D.C.”

[The New York Times]

Reality

Also included in this North-Korean style meeting was a huge list of outright lies.

“I will say that never has there been a president — with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major Depression to handle — who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated. Many bills; I guess over 34 bills that Congress signed. A Supreme Court justice who’s going to be a great one … We’ve achieved tremendous success.”

Yet Trump has sign no major pieces of legislation, only a pile of Executive Orders and a few bills naming government buildings.

Media

Trump OMB Nominee Uncovered as Anti-Muslim

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday raised alarms about Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Ahead of a Senate Budget Committee hearing on his nomination, the ACLU pointed to Vought’s inflammatory comments about Muslims in a 2016 religious post.

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned,” Vought wrote.

Manar Waheed, ACLU legislative and advocacy counsel, said Vought’s nomination to the position was “disturbing” in its implications for religious freedom.

“It is vitally important that Americans have confidence that their public servants will serve our entire nation in good faith,” he said.

“We will watch Vought closely and press to ensure that those helping decide how public money is spent and the government is managed understand the vital importance of nondiscrimination,” he added.

OMB pushed back on the ACLU’s characterization of Vought’s comments, saying they were merely an internal theological discussion at his alma mater, which is a Christian school

“Russ Vought is here to serve the President and to help Mick Mulvaney advance this Administration’s priorities. If he is to be confirmed by the Senate, there is no doubt that he would afford all people with dignity and respect,” said OMB spokesman John Czwartacki.

[The Hill]

DeVos ‘Not Going to Be Issuing Decrees’ on Civil Rights Protections

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos clashed with Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday over protections for LGBT students, balking when asked directly if she would ban private schools from receiving federal funds if they discriminate against these students.

The Trump administration wants to invest millions into an unprecedented expansion of private-school vouchers and public-private charter schools, prompting critics to worry that religious schools, for example, might expel LGBT students or, more broadly, that private schools might refuse to admit students with disabilities. Testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos told Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., “Let me be clear: Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law. Period.”

But after another Democrat, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, pointed out that federal law is “somewhat foggy” surrounding LGBT student protections, DeVos simply repeated that schools must follow federal law, adding, “Discrimination in any form is wrong.”

Merkley pressed again, asking DeVos point-blank whether private and charter schools receiving federal funds under Trump’s budget proposal could discriminate against students based on sexual orientation or religion.

She said the department “is not going to be issuing decrees” on civil rights protections.

Merkley asked Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who chairs the subcommittee, to note that DeVos refused to directly answer the question.

DeVos came under fire last month for a nearly identical exchange, refusing to tell a House Appropriations subcommittee whether she would block federal voucher funding to private schools that discriminate against LGBT students. U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., told DeVos, “To take the federal government’s responsibility out of that is just appalling and sad.”

DeVos’ spokeswoman later said the controversy stemmed from a “fundamental misunderstanding” by lawmakers about what the secretary was talking about. On Tuesday, DeVos sought to clarify that she wasn’t talking about a specific voucher proposal. “It is really appropriations language,” she said.

During the nearly two-and-a-half-hour hearing, DeVos defended the Trump administration’s proposed $9 billion cut to education, saying the planned 13% reduction in funding may seem shocking, but it’s necessary.

“I’ve seen the headlines, and I understand those figures are alarming for many,” DeVos told lawmakers, according to her prepared testimony. The proposed 2018 budget, she said, refocuses the department on supporting states and school districts in their efforts to provide “high-quality education” to all students while simplifying college funding, among other efforts.

Overall, Trump plans to eliminate or phase out 22 programs that the administration says are “duplicative, ineffective, or are better supported through state, local, or private efforts.”

The administration wants to cut teacher training, vocational training and before- and after-school programs, among others. It also wants to eliminate subsidized loans and a new loan forgiveness program for students who commit to public service after college. Trump wants to funnel the savings into several school choice proposals — including a $250 million fund for expanding public funding of private-school vouchers.

The proposal faces an uphill battle in Congress. On Tuesday, Blunt, a Republican, called it “a difficult budget request to defend,” saying deep cuts to programs like after-school would be “all but impossible” to get through the committee.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Trump’s budget request “can be summed up in one word: abysmal.”

As she has recently, DeVos on Tuesday took a swat at past federal efforts to reform education, noting that discretionary spending at the U.S. Department of Education quadrupled between 1989 and 2016, from $17.1 billion to $68.3 billion.

The “seemingly endless” reform efforts, she said, have been top-down and have generated “more publicity than results,” failing to close long-standing achievement gaps between white, middle-class students and their low-income and minority peers. They’ve also produced disappointing results for high school graduation and college completion rates.

While achievement has been mixed in recent decades, high school graduation and college completion rates have actually risen, sometimes sharply. Federal data show that in 2015, the graduation rate for public high school students rose to a record-high 83%. U.S. colleges also awarded more degrees — 961,167, up 35.2% from a decade earlier.

A GOP mega-donor and four-time chair of the Michigan Republican Party, DeVos previously ran an organization that promotes private-school choice. DeVos last month called school choice critics “flat-earthers” and said expanding families’ educational choices is a way to bring U.S. education “out of the Stone Age and into the future.”

On Tuesday, she said more choice would help families in more ways than one, noting that when parents decide proactively which school their child should attend, “there’s a lot more engagement, naturally, as a result of that.”

Media

 

 

Trump Is Celebrating the Meltdown of the U.S.’s Middle East Alliance on Twitter

A number of Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, have cut off relations with Qatar, the super-rich state you may know in other contexts as home of Al-Jazeera and the controversial future host of the World Cup. It’s a major crisis and, like all other conflicts in the Middle East (and elsewhere on Earth) its causes are complicated, but one of the biggest elements at play is that other regional governments are angry about the clandestine support that Qatar provides to radical insurgent groups like ISIS. For his part, President Trump celebrated the Saudis’ aggressive moves Tuesday morning on Twitter:

Trump is not wrong about Qatar funding extremism; the problem, rather, is that Qatar plays both sides of the street and is also the home of the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. Some 11,000 U.S. troops are stationed at al-Udeid Air Base, including the staff of the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, which supervises the U.S.’s air forces in such critical countries as Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. America also still maintains a close military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which of course has its own long history of fostering jihadism.

We actually know thanks to Russia and WikiLeaks that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta bounced around the idea of pressuring Qatar over its support for ISIS, so it’s not as if Trump is completely off the map here in terms of U.S. interests. But it does seem that there may be a more judicious—or, if you will, diplomatic—way to handle this fire than pouring gasoline on it.

[Salon]

 

 

 

 

Trump: I am calling it a ‘TRAVEL BAN!’

President Trump early Monday made clear the intent of a blocked executive order on immigration now being appealed to the Supreme Court.

“People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” he tweeted.

Trump also said in a series of tweets that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should have fought for his original order, instead of the “watered down, politically correct version” submitted to the Supreme Court.

He said the DOJ should ask for an expedited Supreme Court hearing for the “watered down Travel Ban” and then seek a “much tougher version.”

Trump in his final tweet on the subject said his administration is “EXTREME VETTING” people now coming into the U.S.

“The courts are slow and political!” he added.

Administration officials had rejected the characterization of Trump’s executive order as a travel ban, instead saying it was a vetting system to keep America safe.

Trump over the weekend reignited the debate over the topic following a London terror attack in which seven people were killed and almost 50 others injured.

In a tweet on Saturday, Trump renewed his call for the courts to approve his revised executive order, which would temporarily bar nationals from six predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S. and suspend the acceptance of refugees for 120 days.

“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” Trump said. “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

The Trump administration issued its original travel ban in January. That order, which was blocked by the courts, was met with backlash and protests across the country.

The president then issued a revised ban in March aimed at defusing the controversy and defeating court challenges.

Last week, the Trump administration appealed lower-court decisions to block the revised ban to the Supreme Court.

In a statement last week, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the department had “asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and [is] confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism.”

“The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism,” the statement said, “until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.”

Over the weekend, some Republicans echoed the president’s renewed calls for his travel ban following the London attack, while other lawmakers appeared to disagree with Trump and instead called for inclusion and community.

[The Hill]

 

 

Trump Administration Keeping Senate Torture Report From Public

The CIA, CIA inspector general and director of national intelligence will return their copies of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s massive 6,700-page report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program under the George W. Bush administration, a Senate aide confirmed to CNN on Friday.

The decision means it’s highly unlikely the report — which concluded that interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not elicit useful intelligence from detainees — will be made public so long as Republicans control the Senate and the White House. Democrats are concerned it will never see the light of day if the copies are destroyed.

The report, written under then-intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein when Democrats controlled the Senate, has remained classified, except for an executive summary that was released when the report was completed in 2014. The report concluded that interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not elicit useful intelligence from detainees.

The Senate report was sent to federal agencies in the hope that it could eventually be made public, but committee chairman Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, has asked the administration to return the copies to the Senate.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the report was a congressional record, which is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which Burr said was why he has asked that the agencies return the documents.

“I have directed my staff to retrieve copies of the congressional study that remain with the Executive Branch agencies and, as the committee does with all classified and compartmented information, will enact the necessary measures to protect the sensitive sources and methods contained within the report,” Burr said in a statement.

Republicans have criticized the report as unfairly targeting the CIA and ignoring the intelligence gained under the interrogation program.

The administration’s decision to return the reports to the Senate was first reported by The New York Times.

The intelligence panel’s Democrats slammed the Trump administration for giving the copies back, and Burr for making the demand they be returned.

Sen. Mark Warner, top Democrat on the committee, said he was “very disappointed” by the decision.

“This study must be preserved for history, and the Senate intelligence committee will continue to conduct vigorous oversight of our nation’s intelligence agencies to ensure that they abide by both the spirit and the letter of the law that bans the practices outlined in the report,” he said in a statement.

Feinstein called Burr’s move “divisive” and claimed Democrats on the committee had not been notified or consulted.

“No senator — chairman or not — has the authority to erase history,” the California Democrat said. “I believe that is the intent of the chairman in this case.”

And Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon accused Burr and the Trump administration of seeking to “pave the way for the kind of falsehoods used to justify an illegal and dangerous torture program.”

“For the sake of future generations of Americans, this report should be immediately returned to the government agencies who gave it up, disseminated widely within the government and most importantly, declassified for the American people,” Wyden said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to make the full report public, but its case was dismissed.

“It would be a travesty for agencies to return the CIA torture report instead of reading and learning from it, as senators intended,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.

The committee sent the report to seven federal agencies: the CIA, CIA inspector general, FBI, director of national intelligence and the Justice, State and Defense Departments.
But even if all those copies are returned to the committee, there is another way the report could eventually be made public.

When President Barack Obama was still in office, the White House felt it was caught between congressional Democrats who wanted the full report made public and the CIA and intelligence community that felt strongly against it, according to a former administration official.

But in December, the White House declared the document a presidential record, which means it’s part of the Obama presidential record, which remains classified for 12 years.
“It doesn’t mean it will be automatically declassified after 12 years, but at least in this case, a copy will be preserved,” the official said.

[CNN]

Trump Takes Credit for 1 Million Jobs. Not True.

President Trump proclaimed Thursday that he has created “more than 1 million private sector jobs.”

That’s not true.

Official government data from the Labor Department show only 601,000 private sector jobs have been added since January, when Trump took office. Trump is trying to take credit for far more.

Trump was talking up his jobs record as he withdrew from the Paris climate agreement — a deal he described as a jobs-killer. Here’s the president’s exact quote on jobs:

“Before we discuss the Paris Accord, I’d like to begin with an update on our tremendous, absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day on November 8th. The economy has started to come back and very, very rapidly. We’ve added $3.3 trillion in stock market value to our economy and more than a million private sector jobs.”

Notice that Trump specifically said “private sector jobs,” a term that excludes government jobs at the local, state or federal level.

CNNMoney’s Trump Jobs Tracker gives the president credit for 594,000 jobs so far. That’s because we’re counting both private and public jobs, and there have been a lot of state government job losses since the start of the year.

So where in the world does Trump get his 1 million figure?

Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, says the statistic comes from the ADP employment report. In other words, the the White House is ignoring its own government report.

“I’m standing by that if you add up the ADP numbers, you would get to the number the president put in his speech today,” Cohn told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The latest ADP report came out Thursday — the day of Trump’s speech — and it only measures private sector jobs. It shows 1.2 million private sector jobs added since the start of the year. But there are two big catches.

First, the only way to get to Trump’s figure is to include jobs added in January. Trump was only president for 11 days in January. It’s unusual to give a new president credit for that month.

Second, ADP is just an estimate. It’s not the real data.

ADP is a company that prints (or direct deposits) paychecks for about 24 million Americans. A few days before the official Labor Department jobs data comes out, ADP puts out an estimate of how many jobs were added or lost based on what ADP is seeing in the hiring and firing patterns of companies that it works with.

For years economists and Wall Street investors have kept an eye on the ADP data, but they don’t consider it the official jobs data. The ADP report is often widely different from the government data. That’s because there are over 153 million Americans working today and ADP only gets a good look at the paychecks and employment of 24 million of them.

The latest government report on American jobs came out Friday morning. It shows that U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 4.3%, the lowest level since 2001. That’s good news, but the bad news for Trump is that job growth is slowing.

[CNN]

 

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