DeVos is reportedly considering letting schools use federal money to arm teachers

US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is considering a policy change that would allow states and school districts to use federal money to buy guns for teachers, according to a report by the New York Times’s Erica Green.

This comes as the idea of arming teachers is picking up steam among some conservatives since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February. Two Florida universities have pilot programs to arm educators, and the Florida state legislature passed a bill in March that would allow armed teachers in school classrooms.

The federal government typically bans the use of federal funds to purchase firearms for schools. But DeVos and officials at the Department of Education are reportedly considering the use of Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants — which don’t exclude states or local districts from buying guns. The department wouldn’t need Congress’s approval, since the grants are already law.

These grants are part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, a major federal education law passed in 2015. The grants are typically used to boost student health and wellness, but they don’t say they can’t be used to buy firearms.

With all the discussion about increasing the number of armed professionals in schools this year in the wake of more high-profile school shootings, Congress has stopped short of using federal money to arm teachers. A school safety bill passed earlier this year that contained $50 million per year for districts, but it banned the districts from using any of the money to buy firearms.

The Education Department is trying to downplay the report: “The Department is constantly considering and evaluating policy issues, particularly issues related to school safety,” Education Department spokesperson Liz Hill said in a statement to Vox. “The Secretary nor the Department issues opinions on hypothetical scenarios.”

Hill also told Education Week, “The NY Times piece is getting blown way out of proportion.”

There’s also a new effort underway in the Senate to try to stop DeVos from moving forward, should she choose to. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), an outspoken supporter of gun control issues, introduced an emergency amendment to an Education Department funding bill on Thursday that would ban DeVos from using federal money to arm teachers.

“My lord — we can’t let this happen,” Murphy said.

Texas initially asked about buying guns with federal money

The Education Department reportedly started studying the issue after getting a question from officials in Texas about whether the federal ESSA grants could be used to buy guns, according to Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa.

“Department officials have been researching the issue, like they do with every issue, in response to this Texas letter,” a senior Trump administration official told Ujifusa, noting that while discussions were ongoing, no final decision has been made yet.

If DeVos were to approve the money to allow local districts to buy guns or train teachers on using them, the decision would likely be extremely controversial, both within the education community and outside it.

National gun safety groups and teachers unions issued statements condemning the Education Department for even considering the move.

[Vox]

Kellyanne Conway Claims CNN ‘Interfered in the Election’

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has accused CNN of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by reporting on several women’s misconduct allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump. In a tense Thursday-night interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo, Conway repeatedly dodged questions about new evidence that Trump lied to the public when he claimed to have no knowledge of a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Instead, Conway railed against CNN for its “screaming graphics” and “phony polls” during the election. “Every single night, CNN was featuring another woman with another story. You played the Access Hollywood tape constantly, thinking it would hurt the candidate, he would never be elected,” she said. “CNN interfered in the election daily,” Conway said, by reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump by multiple women. She went on to blast the network for focusing on the Russia investigation, supposedly at the expense of covering the opioid crisis. “Zero [people] died because of impeachment. Zero [people] died because of collusion,” she said.

[The Daily Beast]

Media

Trump: Impeach me and the market crashes

In an interview with Fox & Friends, he said the market would crash and “everybody would be very poor”.

He was speaking after Michael Cohen, his ex-lawyer, pleaded guilty to violating election laws and said he had been directed to do so by Mr Trump.

Mr Trump has rarely spoken about the prospect of being impeached.

Correspondents say it is unlikely Mr Trump’s opponents would try to impeach him before November’s mid-term elections.

Why does Trump say the market would crash?

“I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” Mr Trump told Fox and Friends.

“I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”

Pointing to his head, he said: “Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

[BBC]

Media

 

Trump Bemoans ‘Persecuted White Farmers’ in South Africa

President Trump says he has instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into alleged violence against white farmers in South Africa and the government’s alleged seizure of their land after watching a Fox News report on the subject. Citing Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s statement that the “South African government is now seizing land from white farmers,” Trump tweeted that he’s asked Pompeo to “closely study” the matter, which he said involves the “large scale killing of farmers.” The comments, which appear to fuel claims by right-wing groups that the South African government is waging war against whites, seemed to be an abrupt change of subject from perhaps the biggest blow to Trump’s White House so far: the conviction of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the plea deal by his longtime fixer Michael Cohen earlier this week. The State Department has yet to comment on Trump’s tweet, but in a statement cited in the same Fox News report Trump was referencing, the State Department noted that South Africa’s land redistributions are being carried out through “an open process including public hearings, broad-based consultations, and active civic society engagement.” Most of South Africa’s land belongs to a white minority two decades after apartheid ended.

[The Daily Beast]

Reality

How does a specific white genocide conspiracy theory about white farmers being murdered in South Africa pushed by the white supremacist groups AfriForum and Identity Evropa, where the white supremacist podcasts White Rabbit Radio and Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance both had episodes dedicated to, end up being tweeted out by Donald Trump?

Oh he watched it on white supremacist Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

The reality is, as with the vast majority of conspiracy theories, it is simply not true.

Yes there are farmers being murdered in South Africa and each one is sad and tragic, but since Trump is talking about the data then we have to look at the data. Murder rates among African farmers have drastically declined over the past decades and there are no stats that say they happened for racial reasons.

The last time there was large scale tracking in South Africa of murders of farmers by race, 33% of victims were black.

Also, South Africa’s has a high murder rate, of 34.1 per 100,000 people, that number is far lower in the rural areas.

 

Trump blames Sessions for Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud in rambling Fox News interview

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pointed the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not doing enough to stop his former “fixer” Michael Cohen from pleading guilty to campaign finance charges.

During an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump admitted that it would have been a little “dicey” had he ordered Cohen to make an illegal campaign contribution that would be hush money for women who allegedly had affairs with him.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pointed the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not doing enough to stop his former “fixer” Michael Cohen from pleading guilty to campaign finance charges.

During an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump admitted that it would have been a little “dicey” had he ordered Cohen to make an illegal campaign contribution that would be hush money for women who allegedly had affairs with him.

Unlike the allegations being levied against Trump, however, Obama was not found to have had any part in failing to report the donations, and the donations in question were not being used to pay out hush money to ex-mistresses.

Despite this, however, Trump said that the two cases were very similar — and then took a veiled shot at Sessions.

“He had a massive campaign violation,” Trump claimed. “But he had a different attorney general, and they viewed it a lot differently.”

[Raw Story]

Trump: Cohen’s hush-money payouts didn’t break campaign finance laws

President Trump on Wednesday insisted there was no violation of campaign finance laws when his longtime lawyer paid a porn star and Playboy centerfold hush money — and blamed his predicament on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Asked by “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt if he knew about the payments, Trump claimed he only found out about the payments made by admitted tax cheat Michael Cohen after the fact.

“Later on I knew. Later on. But you have to understand, Ainsley, what he did. And they weren’t taken out of campaign finance. That’s a big thing, that’s a much bigger thing,” the president said in a 50-second snippet of an interview that will air on the show Thursday morning beginning at 6 a.m.

“Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me. I tweeted about it. You know, but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn’t come out of campaign,” the president said, suggesting that since his personal or his company’s money was involved, no laws were broken.

“In fact my first question, when I heard about it was did they come out of the campaign? Because that could be a little dicey and they didn’t come out of the campaign, and that’s big. But they weren’t. It’s not even a campaign violation,” he continued.

In the “Fox & Friends” clip, Trump also made an oblique reference to purported wrongdoing by former President Barack Obama.

“If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation, but they had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently,” he said, an apparent reference to either Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch, Obama’s two attorneys general.

The feds fined Obama’s 2008 campaign for failing to expeditiously report last-minute contributions.

“It is, ethically and morally, entirely of a different character,” said Dan Petalas, former acting general counsel and head of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission.

Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a series of charges and said Trump had directed him to arrange the payments to influence the election.

Corporations are not permitted to contribute to campaigns, and money intended to influence an election must be reported.

[New York Post]

Media

Trump rips New York Times: ‘They’re like lunatics’

President Trump on Wednesday complained that much of the press won’t give him positive coverage, singling out The New York Times as “lunatics.”

Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt that “80 percent” of the media is fake news, and as a result is the “enemy of the people,” an insult he frequently lobs at journalists.

“If I do something well, it’s not reported. Other than in the 20 percent,” Trump said in an interview that will air Thursday.

“I mean, The New York Times cannot write a good story about me,” he continued. “They’re crazed. They’re like lunatics.”

Trump has had a long-strained relationship with the press since he hit the campaign trail in 2015. He often derides negative coverage as “fake news,” and singles out organizations including the Times, CNN, NBC News and The Washington Post.

[The Hill]

 

 

Trump Blasts Cohen: ‘Flipping’ to Get a Plea Deal ‘Almost Ought to Be Illegal’

During his extensive interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, President Trump praised Paul Manafort while tearing Michael Cohenapart for implicating for implicating him in his campaign finance violations.

Even though Cohen’s secretly-record audio of Trump indicates that his ex-boss was involved in his 2016 hush money schemes, Trump insisted that he only found out about the payments “later on.” After complaining that this wasn’t a violation of campaign finance law because the money “came from me,” and he also said ” almost everybody that runs for office has campaign violations, but what Michael Cohen pled to weren’t even campaign related. They weren’t crimes.”

To that point, Earhardt asked him why Cohen accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors if what he did wasn’t illegal. After saluting Manafort – who was found guilty in his trial this week – because he didn’t flip, Trump said that such deals like the one Cohen made shouldn’t be allowed.

“This whole thing about flipping, they call it. I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair, because if somebody going to spend five years like Michael Cohen or 10 of 15 years in jail because of a taxicab deal, because he defrauded some bank. Campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. But if somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. You get 10 years in jail. But if you say bad things about somebody, in other words make up stories, they just make up lies…They make up things and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero. They have a statue erected in their honor. It’s not a fair thing. But that’s why he did it. He made a very good deal. For what he did.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Says ’80 Percent’ of News Media is ‘Enemy of the People’

During a previewed portion of his interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, President Donald Trump elaborated on how just much of the political press he considers the “enemy of the people.”

SPOILER ALERT: Most of it.

When asked if the press is the enemy of the people, Trump answered “no, not at all, but the fake news is, and the fake news is comprised of – it’s a lot – it’s a big chunk. Somebody said what’s the chunk? I said 80 percent. It’s a lot. If I do something well, it’s not reported other than in the 20 percent.”

That’s a 10 percent decrease from the 90 percent of the media Trump was trashing about a month ago.

Trump also particularly dug into The New York Times during the interview, saying the paper “is crazed. They are like lunatics.”

Trump recently attacked the paper when it released a groundbreaking report that White House counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating with Robert Mueller‘s investigation for the last several months.

[Mediaite]

Trump says he knew about hush payments ‘later on,’ contradicting audio

President Donald Trump said in an interview released Wednesday that he found out “later on” that his former personal attorney Michael Cohen paid two women to keep quiet about alleged affairs with Trump, contradicting Cohen’s statements in court a day earlier.

Cohen said in a statement while formally pleading guilty to fraud charges and campaign finance violations that he oversaw one payment to porn film actress Stormy Daniels and another to former Playboy model Karen McDougal “at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” widely understood to be Trump.

But when asked by “Fox & Friends” anchor Ainsley Earhardt in an interview, a clip of which was released Wednesday, whether he knew about the payments, Trump responded that “later on I knew … later on.”

Trump argued that, because the payments did not come from the campaign itself, there was no violation of campaign finance laws. He also told Earhardt he personally paid back Cohen, though prosecutors said Cohen was reimbursed by the Trump Organization.

“They didn’t come out of the campaign. In fact, my first question, when I heard about it, [was] ‘Did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey,’” Trump said. “It is not even a campaign violation.”

Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis said in an interview on MSNBC that Trump was “misstating the law.”

“Donald Trump tweeted that it only is illegal if it’s campaign funds, not if it’s personal funds. That is completely false under the law,” Davis said.

“The interviewer didn’t say, wait a minute, Mr. President, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a campaign contribution, which you said is dicey, or whether you write a personal check,” he said. “The campaign limitations under the law apply the same.”

The documents describing the charges to which Cohen pleaded guilty say that he broke federal law by exceeding the limit of $2,700 for personal campaign contributions because the hush money was intended to influence the election.

[Politico]

Reality

Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt embarrassed herself and her network in the mother of all softball interviews with Donald Trump, who claimed he only knew of illegal hush payments “later on,” even though Trump is on tape directing Cohen to make the payments.

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