Trump Budget May Cut State Department Anti-Semitism Positions

President Trump’s first budget may eliminate special envoy positions at the State Department for combating anti-Semitism, according to a new report.

Trump’s plan may also cut the agency’s diplomatic staff dedicated to addressing climate change and conducting outreach to Muslim communities, Bloomberg said Monday.

Bloomberg said it confirmed the possibility with people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans for State.

Trump is also expected to eliminate one of the agency’s deputy secretary positions and reassign the staff elsewhere, it said.

The role in question oversees State’s management and resources, Bloomberg added, and the agency’s foreign aid is under similar scrutiny for potential cuts.

The administration announced earlier Monday that it is proposing a budget to increase defense spending by $54 billion by reducing spending elsewhere.

Reports emerged the same day Trump is expected to demand major reductions at State and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund his defense spending boost.

Trump is reportedly seeking major cuts to the EPA’s climate change programs and foreign aid through State.

Office of Management and Budget officials have not specified where the overall reductions would occur, but reports have said State’s budget could be slashed by up to 30 percent.

The EPA’s reductions are less severe, with as much as 24 percent of its budget possibly getting trimmed.

More than 120 retired generals and admirals urged Congress Monday not to slash funding for State’s diplomacy and foreign aid.

“The State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps and other development agencies are critical to preventing conflict and reducing the need to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way,” they wrote.

“We urge you to ensure that resources for the international affairs budget keep pace with the growing global threats and opportunities we face. Now is not the time for retreat.”

Monday’s letter included such notable signatories as former CIA director and retired Gen. David Petraeus and former National Security Agency head and retired Gen. Keith Alexander.

Trump has reportedly instructed his Cabinet and administration officials to prepare budget requests for a first outline, expected March 13.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump’s DOJ Dropping Opposition to Texas’ Racist Voter ID Law

President Trump’s Justice Department is ending the government’s opposition to a controversial voter ID law in Texas, according to a group involved in the case.

Danielle Lang, the Campaign Legal Center’s deputy director of voting rights, told The Associated Press and Talking Points Memo on Monday that the Justice Department informed her group and others suing the state of the government’s change in position.

After six years of legal wrangling, the Justice Department will no longer argue that Texas intentionally sought to discriminate against minorities when it passed the law that mandates voters show certain forms of identification before casting a ballot.

“This signals to voters that they will not be protected under this administration,” Lang told Talking Points Memo.

“We have already had a nine-day trial and presented thousands of pages of documents demonstrating that the picking and choosing of what IDs count was entirely discriminatory and would fall more harshly on minority voters. So for the [Justice Department] to come in and drop those claims just because of a change of administration is outrageous.”

Lang said that despite the federal government’s change of heart, organizations challenging the Texas law will press on.

While a federal appeals court struck down the voter ID law a few months before the 2016 elections on the grounds that it had a discriminatory effect, it sent the question about intent back to the lower courts. The Supreme Court rejected Texas’s appeal earlier this year on the first question.

The Justice Department is expected to lay out its new position during a hearing on Tuesday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a supporter of voter identification laws as long as they are “properly drafted” and has voiced skepticism about the Voting Rights Act.

Republicans argue that the limits are unnecessary burdens on a state’s right to make its own laws to protect the ballot box.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump: ‘Nobody Knew That Healthcare Could Be So Complicated’

President Trump said Monday that “nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” as Republicans have been slow to unite around a replacement plan for ObamaCare.

“I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” Trump said after a meeting with conservative governors at the White House.

The GOP governors were in town this weekend for their annual conference and met with Trump to talk about a variety of things, but it’s likely the conversation largely focused on healthcare.

Governors have been split on what should be done with ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, which brought health coverage to many even in deep-red states.

Trump didn’t publicly address that issue Monday morning, but said ObamaCare’s repeal and replacement will give states more flexibility “to make the end result really, really good for them.”

“We have come up with a solution that’s really, really good I think. Very good.”

Trump also dismissed polls that show support for ObamaCare is at an all-time high.

The latest tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 48 percent view the law favorably compared to the 42 percent who don’t.

“People hate it but now they see that the end is coming and they say, ‘Oh ,maybe we love it.’ There’s nothing to love. It’s a disaster, folks.”

(h/t The Hill)

White House Planted Fake Story to Smear Politico Reporter Who Wrote About Leaks

The White House apparently attempted to smear a critical reporter by planting a story about him laughing at the mention of a Navy SEAL’s death.

Politico published a story Sunday morning by Alex Isenstadt and Annie Karni on a surprise meeting called by White House press secretary Sean Spicer to examine aides’ phones and other electronic devices for evidence of leaks.

When multiple sources leaked details of that meeting to Isenstadt and Karni, it appears other White House officials slapped back at one of the Politico reporters using the death of a Navy SEAL killed just days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in a controversial Yemen raid.

The Washington Examiner published a story Sunday evening, about six and a half hours after the “phone check” report broke, that claims one of the Politico reporters mocked a Trump aide’s emotional reaction to the death of Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens.

Politico’s editor, Carrie Budoff Brown, accused the White House of anonymously planting a false story to smear one of the website’s reporters.

Trump complained last week that anonymous sources should be banned as sources of “fake news.”

Isenstadt and Karni reported that Spicer had caused deputy communications director Jessica Ditt to cry after criticizing her work at a staff meeting — but the press secretary offered a denial to Politico.

“The only time Jessica recalls almost getting emotional is when we had to relay the information on the death of Chief Ryan Owens,” Spicer said.

Hours after that story broke, “one informed official” told the Examiner‘s Paul Bedard that Isenstadt “appeared dismissive and laughed” at Spicer’s denial.

“He started laughing about that SEAL,” the “informed official” told the Examiner.

That anonymous White House source also complained that Politico had described Ditt as a “more junior spokesperson,” which the official found “insulting.”

Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring flatly denied that Isenstadt had laughed at the reference to Owens’ death, and the Examiner’s Bedard defended his use of the anonymous source for his report.

“I thought Brad had a good response as did the anon Politico who characterized Spicer,” he told Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple.

(h/t Raw Story)

Trump Lashes Out Over Russia Allegations

President Donald Trump couldn’t hold back anymore.

After a weekend of thorny questions and barbed Democratic criticism surrounding ties between his campaign and Moscow, Trump took to his favorite platform Sunday to fight back.

“Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” the president tweeted.

The tweet marked a departure in tone from the Democratic trolling he had done just a day earlier, mocking the opposing party’s newly elected chairman and attempting to sow discord by speculating that the Democratic National Committee had rigged the election against Bernie Sanders’ preferred candidate.

The White House, however, would have been hard-pressed not to weigh in on the subject of Trump associates’ contacts with Russia. Republicans on Sunday faced endless questions about the ongoing investigation into Russia’s role in the presidential election — especially what role, if any, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should play in overseeing it.

In the wake of allegations that associates of Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials prior to the election, emboldened Democrats increased their calls this weekend for an independent prosecutor to take on the case, arguing that Sessions’ role as a Trump campaign surrogate renders him incapable of handling the case impartially.

Even a vigorous Trump supporter, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California, joined the drumbeat on Friday. “You’re right that you cannot have somebody — a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions — who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” Issa told Bill Maher on HBO. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute.”

Issa’s break with the White House suggested the swirling questions surrounding Trump’s ties to Russia were beginning to singe GOP members of Congress. The former House Oversight chairman — famous for his dogged pursuit of the Obama White House — narrowly won reelection in 2016 with Trump atop the ticket and likely faces a competitive challenge in the midterm election.

He told POLITICO in an interview Saturday that his views about transparency and accountability under Trump are simply an extension of his career-long fight for those issues.

“My view is: It’s extremely important that Congress point the guns at the same direction that they were pointed,” said Issa. Under the Trump White House, Republicans must continue to “demand what we were demanding: transparency, accountability.”

“And this is the best time to show leadership. … We need to seize the opportunity and really push hard to have access so that no sacred cows are protected,” he said. “For credibility, we have to hold this president to the level of transparency that the last president took every effort to thwart.”

Issa remained an outlier among Republicans, however, in his call for a special prosecutor. Responding to calls for an independent investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Saturday that the House would not engage in a “witch hunt.”

“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” the California Republican told reporters at the California GOP’s spring convention in Sacramento. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans …?”

“At this point, there’s nothing there,” Nunes insisted. “Once we begin to look at all the evidence, and if we find any American that had any contact with Russian agents or anybody affiliated with the Russian government, then we’ll be glad to, at that point, you know, subpoena those people before the House and let the legislative branch do its oversight and then we would recommend it over to, you know, the appropriate people.”

Still, the topic dominated the Sunday morning news shows, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez each demanding an independent investigation without Sessions at the helm.

“What we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin,” Perez said.

One day earlier, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate committee investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, said he had “grave concerns” about the independence of the probe following a Washington Post report that said Nunes and Sen. Richard Burr, the panel’s GOP chairman, helped the White House knock down negative news stories.

Warner said he had called both Burr and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to express his concerns.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally whose name is frequently linked to a future role in the White House, was among the Republicans insisting there’s no need for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

“The Justice Department over the course of time has shown itself, with the professionals that are there, to have the ability to investigate these type of things,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “This is whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we’ve seen it happen on both sides, when a special prosecutor gets involved, the thing gets completely out of control. And I think that doesn’t serve anybody’s purposes.”

The attorney general’s former Senate colleague Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Sunday there is “no doubt” that the Senate’s investigation into Russia’s role in last year’s presidential election will be fair. And he insisted it’s far too early to demand that Sessions recuse himself from any investigation into the Russia issue.

“I think that’s way, way getting ahead of ourselves here, Chuck,” Cotton told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “There’s no allegations of any crime occurring. There’s not even indication that there’s criminal investigations under way by the FBI, as opposed to counterintelligence investigations, which the FBI conducts all the time as our main counterintelligence bureau. If we get down that road, that’s a decision that Attorney General Sessions can make at the time.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump’s First Dinner Out in DC: His Own Hotel

Donald Trump picked a familiar spot for his first dinner out in Washington since becoming president: his own hotel.

Trump’s motorcade arrived at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, a recently renovated property located less than a mile from the White House, shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Saturday.

The White House said Trump was dining with his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is also a senior adviser to the president.

Scenes posted on social media from inside the hotel also showed Trump with Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, a campaign backer.

The group of White House reporters that trails Trump, known as the “pool,” was held in vans and not permitted to enter the building.

The visit is likely to add to buzz surrounding the president’s potential conflicts of interest stemming from his business empire.

The building that houses the hotel — the Old Post Office — was leased by Trump from the federal government.

Language in the lease says that no U.S. elected official “shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

Critics have said that Trump is in violation of the lease agreement.

Trump has repeatedly denied that he has conflicts of interests. He announced at a Jan. 11 press conference he would take steps to distance himself from his businesses, but he has not divested in his companies.

Republican lawmakers, some of whom have been reluctant to probe Trump’s potential business conflicts, have flagged the hotel lease as a point of concern.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said last month he has requested a copy of the contract.

“I did request from the [Government Services Administration] the full, unredacted contract,” Chaffetz told reporters earlier this month. “I requested that the first part of December. I still don’t have it. It will be interesting to see what they produce and what their take on that is. But I don’t have that yet.”

Ethics watchdogs have said Trump could be in violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution if his properties take payments from foreign governments.

That clause, aimed at curbing corruption, says that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of the congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

An attorney representing the Trump said at the January news conference he would donate any hotel profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury.

Trump: FBI ‘Totally Unable’ to Stop Leaks

President Trump on Friday ripped the FBI as “totally unable” to stop leaks within its own ranks, ordering the agency on Twitter to “find now” sources within the government who are speaking to the press.

The tweets come one day after reports emerged that the FBI rejected a White House request to dispute media accounts of regular contact between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian intelligence officials.

“Multiple U.S. officials briefed on the matter” told CNN that the agency declined to publicly corroborate White House chief of staff Reince Priebus’s claim that reports of ties between Trump’s team and Moscow were “total baloney.”

Trump has sparred openly with the U.S. intelligence community since its assertion that Russia interfered in last year’s election with the intention of helping him win.

Since his inauguration, Trump has specifically turned his anger on intelligence leaks to the “fake news media.”

“The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake,” Trump told reporters during a lengthy, at times argumentative White House press conference last week. “Over the course of time I’ll make mistakes and you’ll write badly and I’m OK with that. I’m not OK when it’s fake.”

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Will Be First POTUS to Skip White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Over 30 Years

President Donald Trump is skipping this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, he announced Saturday on Twitter, offering without any explanation: “Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!”

Slated to take place April 29, the annual dinner is traditionally attended by the president, first lady, members of the administration, the White House press corps and numerous media outlets. Proceeds raised by the dinner go toward scholarships and awards for aspiring journalists.

The gathering is typically hosted by a noted comedian who roasts the president and members of the media, and then lets the commander in chief crack his own jokes.

A number of publications — including Bloomberg, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair — have joined a growing list of news organizations that refused to host parties around the ceremonies, citing the president’s baseless claims that longstanding media organizations are spreading “fake news” or are “the enemy of the American people.”

The announcement comes after the president and his administration continue to maintain a public feud with the press and blocked multiple media organizations from attending an impromptu daily briefing with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Friday.

CNN, The New York Times and Politico were not able to attend the off-camera press gaggle with Spicer, while conservative media organizations were shown preference by the administration.

The White House Correspondents’ Association responded shortly after Trump tweeted and said they still planned to have the dinner despite his absence.

“The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner, which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic,” association President Jeff Mason said in a statement.

“We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession,” he added.

White House Strategist Steve Bannon told Conservative Political Action Conference attendees on Thursday that Trump would continue to attack the media, which Bannon described as “corporatist,” “globalist” and members of “the opposition party.”

Late-night comedy host Samantha Bee announced that she would host a dinner at the same night and time to compete with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in protest of the Trump administration. Named “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” all proceeds raised will be donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Trump attended the dinner in 2011 when Barack Obama was president and was roasted by the then-president.

The first White House Correspondents’ Dinner occurred in 1921, and the first president attended — Calvin Coolidge — in 1924. Fifteen presidents have attended since.

Ronald Reagan was the last president to skip the dinner, according to the Reagan Library. In 1981, the newly elected president decided he wouldn’t attend because he was recovering from a gunshot wound in a failed assassination attempt on his life less than a month earlier.

Nevertheless, Reagan still called in to provide a few remarks.

“If I could give you just one little bit of advice,” Reagan quipped over the phone, “when somebody tells you to get in a car quick, do it.”

(h/t NBC News)

 

 

 

Trump Rejects Intelligence Research on Muslim Ban

The White House is dismissing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence report rebuffing President Trump’s claims that citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries pose an increased terror threat, the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday.

“The president asked for an intelligence assessment,” a senior administration official told the Journal. “This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.”

Trump administration officials claim that the report failed to include available evidence that supports the president’s Jan. 27 order barring citizens from Syria, Iraq, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia from entering the U.S.

That executive order was blocked by a federal appeals court earlier this month, and Trump has said he is crafting a new order that can withstand legal muster.

Acting DHS Press Secretary Gillian Christensen also challenged the agency’s report, calling it an “incomplete product.” But she said the administration’s reason for taking issue with it was not political.

“Any suggestion by opponents of the president’s policies that senior [DHS] intelligence officials would politicize this process or a report’s final conclusions is absurd and not factually accurate,” Christensen told the Journal.

“The dispute with this product was over sources and quality, not politics.”

The DHS report came after Trump reportedly asked the department to help bolster his legal case for implementing the controversial travel ban.

But the findings seemed to directly contradict the president’s key argument, saying that an individual’s citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of the threat they pose to the U.S., according to the Associated Press.

As a presidential candidate, Trump took a hardline stance on terrorism by Islamist extremists, and often contended that the U.S. was too willing to allow people from Muslim-majority countries to enter its borders.

But his efforts to implement a travel ban on certain countries was met with sharp criticism by many, who accused it of being a de facto Muslim ban and a violation of religious freedom protections.

(h/t The Hill)

DOJ Walks Back Guidance Discouraging Use of Private Prisons

The Department of Justice has rescinded guidance from August that discouraged the use of private prisons.

“This will restore (the Bureau of Prison’s) flexibility to manage the federal prison inmate population based on capacity needs,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

In August, then-deputy Attorney General Sally Yates directed the Bureau of Prisons to reduce its use of private prison contracts. In the August memo, she said private prisons had been used to house a prison population that had grown 800% between 1980 and 2013.

But, she said, the population is now on the decline, from 220,000 in 2013 to 195,000 in 2016.

A DOJ official said on background Thursday that the BOP has 12 private prison contracts, housing approximately 21,000 inmates.

In a new memo dated February 21 and released for the first time on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote that the Yates memo “changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.” He directed the bureau to “return to its previous approach.”

“This will restore BOP’s flexibility to manage the federal prison inmate population based on capacity needs,” the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker was quick to speak out against the change in policy.

“The Trump administration’s decision to reverse course on existing policies designed to gradually end the use of private prisons is a major setback to restoring justice to our criminal justice system,” Booker said in a statement. “The Bureau of Prisons’ own inspector general has found that privately-managed prisons housing federal inmates are less safe and less secure than federal prisons, and these facilities have seen repeated instances of civil rights violations. Attaching a profit motive to imprisonment undermines the cause of justice and fairness.”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

As The Week put it: “Private prisons ultimately pose a greater threat to inmates because of their raison d’être; they exist solely to make a profit off of incarcerated individuals.”

The private prison industry also have contributed big sums to pro-Trump groups, including the organization that raised a record $100 million for his inauguration last month.

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