White House Aide Sebastian Gorka Resigns

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump closely aligned with Steve Bannon, has resigned, a source close to Gorka confirmed Friday.

In a resignation letter, Gorka cited “forces” that do not support President Trump’s “MAGA promise” as being ascendant in the White House.

“Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months,” Gorka wrote.

[Politico]

Trump Signs Order For Military to Discriminate Against Transgender Recruits

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a directive reinstating a ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military, although it defers to the Pentagon on whether to remove those now in uniform and leaves open the door for it to seek changes.

Trump’s directive, issued to the Defense and Homeland Security Departments, reinstates a prohibition of transgender service members lifted last year, putting a formal stamp on a politically divisive change in military personnel policy that Trump first announced last month.

It also bars funding to pay for gender-reassignment surgeries except when “necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex.”

The guidance gives Defense Secretary Jim Mattis until Feb. 21, 2018, to submit a plan for implementing the new policy. It also leaves decision of whether to remove current troops to Mattis.

The White House memo also leaves the door open for further changes in the transgender policy, stating that Mattis may advise him on changes.

“The Secretary of Defense, after consulting with the Secretary of Homeland Security, may advise me at any time, in writing, that a change to this policy is warranted,” the memo states.

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced in June 2016 the ban on transgender troops would be lifted. Mattis, however, delayed implementation of the policy for new recruits by six months to allow for further study.

Trump first revealed he would reverse the policy in a series of tweets on July 26, announcing transgender individuals would not be allowed “to serve in any capacity” in the military.

Trump’s announcement last month on Twitter that he planned to reverse the Obama policy was hailed by some conservatives who argue that the military has become a social experiment.

But it also drew widespread condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans, who argue the policy shift is discriminatory and would disrupt military readiness.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White Friday confirmed in a statement that the department had received the guidance but provided no further details.

“The Department of Defense has received formal guidance from the White House in reference to transgender personnel serving in the military,” White said. “More information will be forth coming.”

Experts predict that implementation of the ban will prove a lethal thicket and predict a series of court challenges that will likely delay the policy.

[Politico]

Trump Pardons His Friend Sheriff Joe Arpaio

President Donald Trump has pardoned controversial former sheriff Joe Arpaio of his conviction for criminal contempt, the White House said Friday night.

Arpaio, who was a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona, was found guilty of criminal contempt last month for disregarding a court order in a racial profiling case. Arpaio’s sentencing had been scheduled for October 5.

“Not only did (Arpaio) abdicate responsibility, he announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise,” wrote US District Judge Susan Bolton in the July 31 order.

Trump indicated he would pardon Arpaio at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday: “I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy.”

“I’ll make a prediction,” Trump said, adding, “I think he’s going to be just fine.”

However, civil rights groups have pushed back against the possibility of Arpaio’s pardon.

After Trump’s comments at the Phoenix rally, the ACLU tweeted: “President Trump should not pardon Joe Arpaio. #PhoenixRally #noarpaiopardon,” accompanied with a graphic that reads, “No, President Trump. Arpaio was not ‘just doing his job.’ He was violating the Constitution and discriminating against Latinos.”

Arpaio, who has called himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was an early Trump supporter, but his stance on illegal immigration was what had earned him national recognition.

[CNN]

Trump: I Pass a Lot of Bills. Also, the Democrats Won’t Let Me Pass Bills.

See if you can spot the contradiction in these two tweets President Trump posted Friday morning.

Eight Democrats control the Senate, he warns, meaning that the Republican majority must end the filibuster to pass legislation.

Eleven minutes later, a different story: In seven months, Trump’s seen unprecedented success, including … passing a lot of legislation.

This is not the first time Trump’s tried to have it both ways on legislation.

On July 11, this tweet:

And on July 17: “We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever,” he said.

Those can’t both be true, by definition. You can’t pass “more bills … than any president ever” if there are “no votes” on the bills.

This is in part a byproduct of one of Trump’s best-known personality traits, his tendency toward hyperbole. Nothing that’s good is anything less than great and beautiful in Trump’s eyes; nothing that’s bad is anything more than terrible or the worst. There’s no average day in the Trump presidency, just days jostling each other at the very top and very bottom of the spectrum. (Or, really, just at the very top.) And so it is not the case that Trump is in the middle of the pack in terms of legislation passed, he’s the best.

It’s also a byproduct of another of Trump’s well-known characteristics: Nothing is his fault. He did once tell the nation that he alone could fix what was broken in Washington, that what was needed was a dealmaker, who could come in, crack skulls and get a negotiated resolution. But making deals in Congress isn’t like making deals in Trump Tower. There are no one-on-one negotiations, just 52-on-1 negotiations with the Republican caucus in the Senate, with 52 people who represent diverging constituencies and interests. Whether Trump’s dealmaking skills weren’t overhyped, it’s clear that he’s met his match in Congress.

Remember: The most spectacular failure by the Republicans so far this year was on the health-care bill that only needed 50 votes. Trump’s signed no major legislation into law, and the one bill that would have met that definition failed independently of any need to overhaul the filibuster.

That’s not the story that Trump wants to tell. He wants to blame the failure on the Democrats — and, secondarily, on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who’s earned his own disapproving tweets from Trump in recent weeks. Whatever happened that was bad, Trump would like us to know, it certainly wasn’t the fault of Donald J. Trump.

So we end up with weird moments like Friday morning, a president who is both bragging about his unprecedented success and lamenting the unprecedented obstruction that’s preventing him from doing his job.

As Cornell Law professor Josh Chafetz noted on Twitter, neither of those claims is true. He’s signed more bills than some presidents and less than others. The filibuster makes consensus-building trickier, but rifts within his own party in both the House and the Senate are the bigger initial stumbling block.

But, again, most of America by now takes this in stride. We know Trump exaggerates and lies and misrepresents; we know that his hyperbole is just that. We know that the president wants to be hailed as the best and to have all of his failures blamed on someone else. For better or worse, we’ve come to terms with it.

Just as we’ve come to terms with Trump’s now-expected early morning tweets containing internal contradictions. One more day in the world of 2017.

[Washington Post]

Trump Unloads On GOP Leaders, Clapper and Media in Typo-Riddled Twitter Rant

President Trump fired off a series of tweets on Thursday morning, attacking Republican leaders in Congress, defending the wildly shifting tones in his recent speeches and retweeting a crude photo collage of him “eclipsing” former President Barack Obama in a typo-riddled tirade.

Trump began by accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan of not following his advice on debt-ceiling negotiations.

“I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval,” the president tweeted. “They didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

Those tweets came just hours after the White House issued a statement saying Trump and McConnell “remain unified on many shared priorities” and will meet when Congress returns from its August recess.

The statement seemed to be in response to a New York Times report that the relationship between the president and McConnell has “disintegrated” to the point where the Senate majority leader is now privately questioning whether Trump can even save his presidency.

According to the Times, Trump “berated” McConnell during an Aug. 9 phone call “that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.”

“During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue,” the Times reported. “He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.”

The president also criticized the media’s scrutiny of the shifting tone of his back-to-back-to-back speeches, misspelling the words “there” and “too.”

“The Fake News is now complaining about my different types of back to back speeches. Well, their was Afghanistan (somber), the big Rally (enthusiastic, dynamic and fun) and the American Legion – V.A. (respectful and strong),” Trump tweeted. “To bad the Dems have no one who can change tones!”

He wasn’t done.

Trump then ripped James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who told CNN on Tuesday that the president’s fiery speech in Phoenix left him questioning the commander in chief’s fitness for office.

“James Clapper, who famously got caught lying to Congress, is now an authority on Donald Trump. Will he show you his beautiful letter to me?” Trump tweeted.

Amid the barrage, the president paused to retweet a meme-like photo of his face crossing in front of Obama’s, above the message “Best Eclipse Ever.”

[Yahoo News]

Update

Jerry Travone, whose meme Trump retweeted, turns out to be another white supremacist. Trump has a pattern of retweeting them.

Trump Goes Off-Script in Hour-Long Public Meltdown

After walking on stage at the Phoenix Convention Center to “God Bless the U.S.A.” for what was, effectively, a 2020 campaign rally, Donald Trump repeatedly ditched his teleprompter and went off-script as he ranted about being mistreated by the media in the wake of Charlottesville, relentlessly attacked an array of enemies including both of Arizona’s Republican senators, and portrayed himself as the true victim of a violent clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters that left one woman dead. Journalists and other social-media commentators watched, stunned, as he proceeded to spend the rest of his hour-long speech unloading on the mainstream press, praising a CNN pundit who was fired for tweeting a Nazi slogan, and re-litigating his entire response to Charlottesville, line by line, in what has become a hallmark of the Trump presidency: a full-on public meltdown.

With a captive, cheering audience of thousands before him, Trump reveled in the opportunity to vent, after a long summer of political crises, and to set the record straight. “What happened in Charlottesville strikes at the core of America,” he said, blaming the “thugs” and the “dishonest media” for the violence in Virginia. This statement drew nearly a minute of boos from the rabid crowd. “I strongly condemned the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the K.K.K. They know it because they were all there,” he said, referring to the media. “I thought I’d take just a second and do this, because you know where my heart is, to show how damn dishonest these people are.”

Trump proceeded to reread the statement he initially gave in response to the protest, conveniently leaving out the part where he blamed “many sides”—both white supremacists and the anti-racist counter-protesters—for the violence. He mocked the media: “It took a day! Why didn’t he say it fast enough!” He berated The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN in one breath, and flatly defended himself against charges of racism. “And then they say, is he a racist? And then I did a second one,” he said, referring to another statement he gave. “And then I said, racism is evil. Did they report that I said racism was evil? They all say what a bad guy I am. And then you wonder why CNN is doing relatively poorly in the ratings. They put seven people, all anti-Trump, and then they fired Jeffrey Lord!” he added, referring to the pundit who was fired after tweeting “Seig Heil” at a critic. “Poor Jeffrey.”

“The words were perfect,” Trump said of his own words about Charlottesville. “They only take out anything they think of, and all they do is complain. The media can attack me, but where I draw the line is when they attack you, the decency of our supporters. You are honest, hard-working, tax-paying—and you’re over-taxed, but we’re going to get your taxes down—Americans. It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions and to challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions. They are trying to take away our history and our heritage.”

For a speech that began, ostensibly, as a call for unity, Trump’s rally was filled with barbed attacks on all variety of people who he said had no place in America. Trump spoke broadly about “liberating our towns” from undocumented immigrants, citing Joe Arpaio, pledging to purge “sanctuary cities” of undocumented immigrants and leading the crowd in a “build the wall” chant. He threatened a government shutdown if the wall he wants constructed between the U.S. and Mexico isn’t approved. And, after the White House said Trump wouldn’t pardon Arpaio during his rally in Phoenix, Trump hinted that a pardon would come. “Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe? Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?” he asked. “He should have had a jury. But I’ll make a prediction. I think he’s gonna be just fine. But, but, I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy. Is that O.K.? But Sheriff Joe can feel good.”

The president reserved a few positive words for his friends in the conservative media—the only truthful people, he claimed, in a country full of fake news. Trump sang the praises of Fox and Friends and “honest guy” Sean Hannity, specifically, unlike the rest of the mainstream press. “These are dishonest people. They are bad people. The only people giving a platform to hate. Look back there! Those live red lights, they’re turning those lights off fast,” Trump said, apparently referring to the media bullpen at the convention center. “Like CNN. It does not want its falling viewership to watch what I’m saying tonight.”

[Vanity Fair]

Reality

In his 77 minute speech, Trump:

  • Lied about number of protesters outside the event, saying not too many people were there, but videos show thousands.
  • Attacked a free and open press for not showing crowd size. They were.
  • Attacked the press for misquoting his response to Charlottesville, so he read his statement, misquoting it, conveniently leaving out the controversial statement on blaming violence “on many sides.”
  • Defended the Confederacy.
  • Threatened to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t fund a southern border wall that he promised Mexico would pay for.
  • Attacked both Republican Senators from Arizona.
  • Claimed no president has even done more than him in the first seven months, despite no major legislation passed during this time.

 

 

Trump Picks Lobbyist Linked to Forced-Abortion Sweatshop Scandal as Overseer of Worker Protections in U.S.

President Donald Trump’s pick to be deputy secretary for the Department of Labor is a former lobbyist who worked to allow companies to run sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands, a territory of the United States.

Mother Jones reported on Tuesday that Trump nominee Patrick Pizzella was linked to a scandal involving disgraced former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Pizzella reportedly helped defeat a bipartisan effort to clean up sweatshops on the islands in the 1990s after horrific details of worker conditions and forced abortions came to light.

According to Mother Jones, Pizzella and his colleagues arranged trips to the Northern Mariana Islands for more than 100 members of Congress in order to defeat the measure.

Read the entire report here.

[Raw Story]

Trump: Flake ‘Toxic,’ Boosts His Primary Opponent

President Donald Trump turned hard on a fellow Republican Thursday, boosting the primary opponent of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and calling the incumbent “toxic.”

“Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He’s toxic!” Trump tweeted.

Flake’s team shot back in a statement issued later Thursday morning: “You don’t serve Arizona by cutting backroom deals in Washington, D.C. That’s why Senator Flake will always fight for the people of our state.”

Flake’s senior Arizona colleague, Sen. John McCain, also came to his defense on Twitter, apparently in response to Trump’s tweet:

And Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also defended Flake, saying the group “unequivocally supports” the Arizona senator.

Ward responded to the President’s message, writing back, “Thank you @realDonaldTrump Working hard so you have a conservative from AZ to help #MAGA. Arizonans excited to see you again next week!”

Ward, an osteopathic physician and former Arizona state senator, is challenging Flake in Arizona’s 2018 Republican primary after having failed to unseat McCain in the previous primary cycle. Flake, meanwhile, has emerged as a regular Trump antagonist in Congress and one of his party’s loudest critical voices of the commander in chief.

Flake recently kicked off his re-election campaign with the release of a book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” in which Flake unloads on Trump and condemns his party for enabling Trump’s rise to power.

In the book, the Arizona Republican details a long-running feud with Trump that dates back to Flake’s resistance, early on, to Trump’s presidential campaign. He writes critically about Trump’s campaign, calling it “free of significant thought” and compares it to a “late-night infomercial.” Flake also touches on Trump’s own prediction that their differences would cost Flake his seat.

“You’ve been very critical of me,” Trump told him in a summer 2016 meeting recounted in the book.

“In the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect. Influencing the news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term tactical advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it’s all noise and no signal,” Flake writes.

(CNN) President Donald Trump turned hard on a fellow Republican Thursday, boosting the primary opponent of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and calling the incumbent “toxic.”

“Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He’s toxic!” Trump tweeted.

Flake’s team shot back in a statement issued later Thursday morning: “You don’t serve Arizona by cutting backroom deals in Washington, D.C. That’s why Senator Flake will always fight for the people of our state.”

Flake’s senior Arizona colleague, Sen. John McCain, also came to his defense on Twitter, apparently in response to Trump’s tweet:

“.@JeffFlake is a principled legislator & always does what’s right for the people of #AZ. Our state needs his leadership now more than ever,” McCain wrote.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
And Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also defended Flake, saying the group “unequivocally supports” the Arizona senator.

Ward responded to the President’s message, writing back, “Thank you @realDonaldTrump Working hard so you have a conservative from AZ to help #MAGA. Arizonans excited to see you again next week!”

Ward, an osteopathic physician and former Arizona state senator, is challenging Flake in Arizona’s 2018 Republican primary after having failed to unseat McCain in the previous primary cycle. Flake, meanwhile, has emerged as a regular Trump antagonist in Congress and one of his party’s loudest critical voices of the commander in chief.

Flake recently kicked off his re-election campaign with the release of a book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” in which Flake unloads on Trump and condemns his party for enabling Trump’s rise to power.

In the book, the Arizona Republican details a long-running feud with Trump that dates back to Flake’s resistance, early on, to Trump’s presidential campaign. He writes critically about Trump’s campaign, calling it “free of significant thought” and compares it to a “late-night infomercial.” Flake also touches on Trump’s own prediction that their differences would cost Flake his seat.

“You’ve been very critical of me,” Trump told him in a summer 2016 meeting recounted in the book.

“In the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect. Influencing the news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term tactical advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it’s all noise and no signal,” Flake writes.

Flake had also called on Trump to withdraw from the presidential race after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, which showed Trump making lewd comments about women.

Ward told CNN in July that she had talked to White House officials about her run against the incumbent Flake. She also controversially suggested that McCain might need to step down from his seat after his brain cancer diagnosis last month — which would have opened the door to her potential appointment to his seat.

Trump, meanwhile, plans to hold a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, next week, where he’ll have another chance to wade into the state’s turbulent Republican politics.

[CNN]

Interior Dept. Halts Study Into Appalachian Mining Technique’s Likely Health Hazards

The Trump administration has halted a study of the health effects of a common mining technique in Appalachia, which is believed to deposit waste containing toxic minerals in ground waters.

A letter from the Interior Department directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to “cease all work” on a study of the potential health risks of mountaintop removal mining for people living near surface coal mine sites in central Appalachia. The Interior Department acknowledged in a statement that it had “put on hold” $1 million in funding for the two-year project as part of a review of its grants, which is focused on “responsibly using taxpayer dollars.”
“The Trump Administration is dedicated to responsibly using taxpayer dollars and that includes the billions of dollars in grants that are doled out every year by the Department of the Interior,” the statement said.

Still, the National Academies — a nongovernmental institution that researches and advises the government on science and technology — plans to move forward with part of the research, and will hold previously scheduled public meetings this week in Kentucky, the Academies said in a statement.

Political reaction was swift to the Trump administration’s decision to suspend the study of “the potential relationship between increased health risks and living in proximity to sites that have been or are being mined or reclaimed for surface coal deposits,” which began last year and was expected to take two years to complete.

“Mountaintop removal mining has been shown to cause lung cancer, heart disease, and other medical problems,” Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking democrat on the House Committee of Natural Resources, said in a statement.
“Clearly this administration and the Republican Party are trying to stop the National Academy of Sciences from uncovering exactly how harmful this practice is,” Grijalva said.

“It’s infuriating that Trump would halt this study on the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining, research that people in Appalachia have been demanding for years,” said Bill Price, Senior Appalachia Organizing Representative for environmental advocacy group Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

[CNN]

Trump Dissolves Climate Change Advisory Panel

The Trump administration has decided to dissolve a federal advisory panel that contributes to a report that measures the current and future impacts of climate change on the U.S., The Washington Post reports.

The acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ben Friedman, informed the chair of the advisory committee that the agency would not renew its charter, which expired Sunday, the report said. This comes two years after NOAA formed the panel, called the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment, whose 15 members were tasked with advising government and private sector stakeholders on navigating climate change.

The National Climate Assessment, as the report on climate change is known, is supposed to be issued every four years, and the next one is expected next spring, according to the Post.

In the meantime, the administration is reviewing a report that could be key to the final assessment, which estimates that human activities are to blame for an increase in global temperature from 1951 to 2010. Scientists from 13 different agencies produced the report.

That report, which was obtained by The New York Times earlier this month, is awaiting final approval by the Trump administration. The report indicates that temperatures in recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years.

[CBS News]

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