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Trump’s first White House screening was a movie about migration and environmental pollution.

by SheritaWOEC Posted on January 30, 2017

On Monday, the president signed “a big one”: an executive order mandating that for every new regulation created, two regulations must be eliminated.

The order also says that the total cost of regulatory changes should be zero. Rules related to the military, national security, and foreign affairs are exempted, of course.

Experts are scratching their heads over what this will mean. “The whole rule-writing area is now in complete chaos and environmental rules are going to be caught up in that,” said Georgetown environmental law professor Hope Babcock.

“An agency can’t just say here’s a regulation and goodbye two,” said Georgetown law professor William Buzbee. “Every change in regulation requires a new rulemaking. What this will really do — this is requiring so much work — is most agencies will have incentives to avoid doing any rulemaking.”

And getting rid of regulations isn’t easy. The president has to “faithfully execute” all laws and cannot undo agency regulations that enforce laws like the Clean Air Act. Any rollback, such as eliminating a species from the endangered list, would have to be completed in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, which takes time, according to Babcock. “You can’t just by executive fiat rescind a rule,” she said.

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Trump’s first White House screening was a movie about migration and environmental pollution.

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How to Process the Tide of Trump News

by melaniezqm Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Late last Friday, when social media was full of post-inauguration tea-leaf-reading, a few of us at the MoJo office found ourselves drawn into a rabbit hole of tweets about photos of Trump in the Oval Office. Wow, he had installed golden drapes! How…Versaillean. And what about that painting of a flag-bedecked street on the wall? It was Fifth Avenue in the Rain, created by the impressionist Childe Hassam amid intense nationalist fervor just as the United States was about to enter World War I. We mentally started composing tweets with ominously succinct openers: “Pay attention.” “Important.”

Then we splashed some cold water in our faces. Did we actually know that any of this was significant? We poked around a little more and found Obama photographed in front of some gold Oval Office drapes (as well as a rainbow of others). And that painting? Right there next to Obama, too.

You might have found yourself similarly tumbling through freak-outs big and small this first week of the Trump administration—and for good reason. It felt as if every minute brought more head-spinning news. The White House website overhauled; a passel of radical executive orders; National Park Service Twitter accounts seemingly going rogue, then retreating; a boundless obsession with crowd photos; leaks, drama, more tweets, more drama.

And all of it was a BFD. All of it got people hitting ALL CAPS, deploying expletives, ominously quoting Hannah Arendt and Solshenitsyn, and demanding outrage.

But not every single thing that happened this week was in the OMG SHOCKER UNPRECEDENTED category. And that’s important to remember—because people who care about democracy have never needed clear heads more than now. We need to retain the ability to pick out signal from noise, Defcon One from Defcon Five.

We saw three kinds of developments this week—let’s call them normal, normalesque, and definitely not normal. The first kind is simply part of the shift in power to another president and party: changes that could just as easily happen with (just for the sake of argument) a President Warren replacing Trump in 2021. Overhauling the White House website, freezing regulations, and even telling federal workers not to tweet fall, sort of, into this category.

The second category are policy changes more radical than what we would have seen from other GOP presidents, because today’s GOP is more radical. Those changes will in many cases mobilize shock and opposition—even from some in the Republican Party itself. Announcing the border wall, expanding the “global gag rule,” repealing Obamacare, banning immigrants for their nationality alone, even nominating cabinet members who disagree with the mission of the agencies they will lead are in this category. They will get, and deserve, a bitter fight on policy grounds, but they are still on the (far end of) the spectrum of what we can expect in a democracy at a time of tectonic political shifts. They are normalesque.

But then there is a third category—the actions of a man with a temperament and behavior we haven’t seen in the White House in modern times, if ever. Trump personally, as near as we can tell, believes in few things except himself; his actions are often precipitated by rumors and stuff on TV that makes him mad; and most significantly he, along with many of his closest advisers, is inclined toward authoritarianism and a retrograde sort of nationalism. The actions that flow from these qualities are the ones that transcend normalcy entirely. Insisting that the constitution doesn’t apply when you don’t want it to; chastising the press for reporting obvious facts and calling it “the opposition party”; perpetuating a massive smear against the electoral system by claiming that millions voted illegally: Those things are not even at the outside edges of normal. Those things draw from another playbook—not that of democracy.

So. What to do?

One of the most important things at a turbulent moment like this is to step back: to sift signal from noise and consider which developments rattle the foundations of democracy and which are simply the fallout from a change election.

But stepping back is hard for many reasons—not least of them the fact that many media outlets are incentivized to keep us at Defcon One. The 2016 campaign turned “fake news” into a household word, but outright manufactured smears aren’t the only problem: Weak news—decontextualized, unverified, sensationalized bits of outrage-bait—is just as much of a danger. And here, we can’t just blame Macedonian teenagers or Russian bots. Weak news is what happens when media are under pressure to grab eyeballs by appealing to our fears and preconceptions: SEE? TOLD YOU!! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY JUST DID.

That’s a frame of mind many who oppose Trump are in now, for good reason, and predators and hucksters are going to see a big opportunity. They are going to want to gin up falsehoods to hook you. They will send emails demanding that you FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, tweets begging you to RT IF YOU AGREE. Some of them will be mercenaries looking for ad dollars. Some will be aiming to deluge you with fake petitions. Some will even be earnestly pushing stories they believe prove the worst (but that actually get well out past what’s known). All of them will be creating a fog of outrage and anger that obfuscates a reality very much in need of focused vigilance.

Here at Mother Jones, we hope we can be part of helping you sort weak and fake news from real, and outrage-bait from true outrage. We’ve been going after difficult, dangerous stories for more than 40 years, and we know that our research has to be solid, because people will want to impugn all of our work for the slightest error. We check and recheck sources and context; our bigger investigations go through many weeks of painstaking fact-checking. (One of our former researchers describes the process here.) We publish facts, not rumors.

Case in point: Before the election, we learned that a veteran intelligence professional had compiled allegations that Russia long sought to infiltrate Trump’s team and put together compromising information about him. We didn’t publish the specific allegations because we could not independently verify them. But the fact that a credible intelligence professional was worried enough to pass them along to the FBI was newsworthy, and we reported on that. (Last weekend, the New York Times‘ public editor, Liz Spayd, noted that Mother Jones‘ story “offered a model” of what the Times—which had the information, too, but sat on it—could have done.)

We could get lots of attention and web traffic by breathlessly passing along every sensational bit floating around the internet. But we won’t, and we don’t have to—because there aren’t shareholders or owners pressuring us to maximize profit (or, for that matter, warning us against interfering with powerful interests). We are in business because readers choose to invest in real research and reporting, and because you want it to reach a wide audience.

So here’s one way to both push back against fake news and weak news, and reduce the noise in your feed or inbox: Sign up for our free email newsletters (the sign-up form is below), and we’ll send you hand-picked, accurate reporting four times a week. (Or you can pick which of our newsletters—on politics, environment, food, and weekly highlights—you want.) If you do, let us know what you think—and share it with your circles.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, says the press should “keep its mouth shut.” No. Here at MoJo, we’re doubling down on the stories that matter the most, and getting them out to people who don’t intend to shut up. When the administration labels the press as the “opposition party” and talks about “alternative facts,” they want you to believe there is no such thing as truth. They will fail.

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How to Process the Tide of Trump News

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

by NatalieS20 Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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I went to lunch, did a bit of shopping, and came home. Elapsed time: about 90 minutes. In that span:

President Trump endorsed a plan for a 20 percent tax on imports from all countries we’re running a trade deficit with.
Sean Spicer said Mexico’s portion of the tax would pay for the wall.
Spicer then said this wouldn’t raise prices for American consumers, though it quite plainly would.
Finally, a few minutes later, Spicer reversed himself and said the 20 percent tax is not a policy proposal after all, merely an example of how we might pay for the wall.

As of now, no one really knows what any of this means. The Trump team still doesn’t seem to get that they’re in the effing White House now. What they say matters. You don’t just toss out any random shit that comes to mind.

In the meantime, Steve Bannon took to the New York Times to up the ante on the White House war with the media:

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

….Mr. Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website he ran until last August, was echoing comments by Mr. Trump this weekend, when the president said he was in “a running war” with the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on earth.”

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin. In any case, to the extent that the media is dedicated to exposing lies and reporting the truth, it is indeed the opposition party to people like Bannon.

Then there’s this:

Finally, if you need a bit of levity to make up for all the rest of this, our friends at Public Policy Polling have released yet another of their entertaining trolls:

Then again, I suppose this isn’t really funny. Here’s my guess: despite more than a year of spittle-flecked fury at Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, most Trump voters probably don’t even know what a private server is. Nor do they care. It was just a buzzword that somehow meant Hillary was a crook.

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

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Who installs more solar power? Republicans and Democrats are pretty much tied.

by NathanielBrazil Posted on January 26, 2017

On Thursday, TransCanada, the corporation behind the infamous project, resubmitted an application to the State Department for permission to build the pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border.

Just two days earlier, President Donald Trump had signed a presidential memorandum formally inviting the company to give the pipeline another go. Apparently, TransCanada got right down to work.

“This privately funded infrastructure project will help meet America’s growing energy needs,” said TransCanada CEO Russ Girling, “as well as create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.” A 2013 State Department report found the pipeline would create 28,000 jobs, but just 35 would be permanent.

Barack Obama rejected the pipeline plan in 2015, after indigenous groups and environmentalists fought it for nearly a decade. Now that a new application has been submitted, the project needs to be OK’d by both the State Department and Trump to proceed. Nebraska also needs to review and approve the project, which it’s expected to do.

Last June, TransCanada took advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement — a deal Trump disdains — to file a $15 billion claim against the U.S. government for rejecting its Keystone proposal. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

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Who installs more solar power? Republicans and Democrats are pretty much tied.

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First: Cats. Now: The polarization of science. Is there anything curiosity can’t kill?

by BrandieMarsden Posted on January 26, 2017

On Thursday, TransCanada, the corporation behind the infamous project, resubmitted an application to the State Department for permission to build the pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border.

Just two days earlier, President Donald Trump had signed a presidential memorandum formally inviting the company to give the pipeline another go. Apparently, TransCanada got right down to work.

“This privately funded infrastructure project will help meet America’s growing energy needs,” said TransCanada CEO Russ Girling, “as well as create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.” A 2013 State Department report found the pipeline would create 28,000 jobs, but just 35 would be permanent.

Barack Obama rejected the pipeline plan in 2015, after indigenous groups and environmentalists fought it for nearly a decade. Now that a new application has been submitted, the project needs to be OK’d by both the State Department and Trump to proceed. Nebraska also needs to review and approve the project, which it’s expected to do.

Last June, TransCanada took advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement — a deal Trump disdains — to file a $15 billion claim against the U.S. government for rejecting its Keystone proposal. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

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First: Cats. Now: The polarization of science. Is there anything curiosity can’t kill?

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Trump Threatens to "Send In the Feds" to Stop Chicago’s Gun Violence

by SavannahHayner4 Posted on January 25, 2017

Mother Jones

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Yet again, President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to threaten Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel with unspecified federal intervention if the city’s violent gun crime rate doesn’t drop:

The last time Trump made such a remark, earlier this month, Emanuel’s office welcomed the attention, releasing the following statement outlining ways the feds could help out:

As the president-elect knows from his conversation with the mayor, we agree the federal government has a strong role to play in public safety by funding summer jobs and prevention programming for at-risk youth, by holding the criminals who break our gun laws accountable for their crimes, by passing meaningful gun laws, and by building on the partnerships our police have with federal law enforcement. We are heartened he is taking this issue seriously and look forward to working with the new administration on these important efforts.

If Trump is serious about solving gun violence in Chicago, he might want to consider that the vast majority of guns used in crimes in the city come from nearby states with loose gun laws. (See how guns stream into Chicago in the gif below put together by The Trace.) He could also beef up the federal government’s anemic efforts to punish domestic gun trafficking.

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Trump Threatens to "Send In the Feds" to Stop Chicago’s Gun Violence

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The EPA is getting an “absolute hammering” from the Trump administration.

by ChetHarness Posted on January 24, 2017

That’s how new news site Axios described it Monday morning, and the news has just gotten worse since then.

A leaked copy of the Trump team’s plan for the EPA calls for slashing its budget, “terminating climate programs,” ending auto fuel-economy standards, and executing “major reforms of the agency’s use of science and economics.”

The Trump administration has frozen EPA grants and contracts, cutting off funding for everything from cleanup of toxic sites to testing of air quality.

EPA employees have been ordered not to share information via social media, press releases, or new website content, Huffington Post reports.

It’s unclear which of these changes are temporary — just in place until Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, gets confirmed — and which might be put in place more permanently.

More bad news for the EPA will be coming: A new team that Trump has put in place to shift the agency’s direction includes three former researchers from Koch-funded think tanks, one former mining lobbyist, and a number of people who have argued against climate action, according to Reuters. And Trump is poised to issue executive orders to weaken pollution rules and cut agency budgets, Vox reports.

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The EPA is getting an “absolute hammering” from the Trump administration.

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20 Unexpected Ways to Use Dish Soap

by JeremiahLongstre Posted on January 24, 2017

I am one of those gals who geeks out pretty quickly when I discover multiple uses for any given household product.

These days I’ve been a big fan of multi-use products like Castile soap, distilled white vinegar and baking soda; dish soap is a fabulous new addition to the list. Who knew?

Chances are, you already have a big bottle of this tucked underneath your kitchen sink. So, break out the dish soap and get ready to have your mind blown!

25 Unexpected Ways to Use Dish Soap

1) Remove greasy build-up in your hair.

Hair oil and daily grime can build up in your hair over time. Try mixing a little squirt of dishwashing liquid into your shampoo, then moisturize well for a renewed shine.

2)Deep clean your blender.

Rather than disassembling the entire unit to deep clean, fill your blenderpartway with warm water and a few drops of dishwashing detergent. Run for a few seconds, empty, rinse and air dry.

3) Wash away ants.

Ants can be an extremely invasive species; you don’t want them in your home! Get rid of ants with a 50/50 solution of water and white distilled vinegar, with a few drops of dish soap. Spray, wait a few minutes and wipe up the mess.

4) Kill weeds kindly.

Make a natural weed-killer that is free of harmful herbicides by mixing one teaspoon of dishwashing liquid with a cup of salt and one gallon of distilled white vinegar. Spray the solution on weeds that are taking root in the cracks of your sidewalks.

5) Freshen up your makeup brushes.

Make a light solution of warm water and a couple drops of dish soap then shake to combine. Gently swirl your brushes in the solution, then rub on your hand or a soft cloth to removeproduct from the bristles. Air dry.

6) Make bubbles.

This is an excellent activity to do with kids! Many people use this recipe in schools and at children’s museums: mix together 1/2 cup of dishwashing soap, 1/2 gallon of warm water and 1 tablespoon glycerin (available at any drug store). Stir gently, skim the foam off the top and dip in your bubble wand for endless fun.


7) Get grease out of your pet’s hair.

There’s a reason why Dawn is the International Bird Rescue Research Center’s cleaner of choice after an oil spill. Dishwashing soap like dawn removes greasewithout harming the animal’s skin. It’s also biodegradable and phosphate-free!

8) Shineyour windows.

Mix a few drops of dish soap in 1 gallon of water, then fill a spray bottle of your choice. Spray and wipe as you would with any conventional window cleaner.

9) De-ice the sidewalk.

Tis the season for icy weather. To de-ice your steps and sidewalk, mix 1 teaspoon of dishwashing liquid with 1 tablespoon of rubbing alcohol, and half a gallon of hot water. Pour over your walkways. They won’t refreeze!

10) Soften your cuticles pre-home manicure.

Soak your fingers in a shallow dish of dish soap. It will make your cuticles soft and malleable, while removing oils from your fingernails.

11) Scrub your linoleum floors.

Just a few drops of dish soap in 8-ounces of water makes for a great floor cleaning solution. Spray on the floor, or use with a mop, to remove dirt and debris.

12) Repel pests from your houseplants.

Don’t buy a chemical spray. Instead, remove pests on your houseplants (including aphids) by spraying with a mild solution of a drop or two of dish soap with warm water.

13) Clear foggy eyeglass lenses.

Place a small drop of dish soap on your finger and rub on your glasses lenses to remove streaks. Rinse with water and air dry or wipe with a dry cloth.

14) Clean the toilet bowl.

Keep a solution of a few drops of dish soap and water in a glass jar in your bathroom or cleaning closet. Pour into your toilet bowl and scrub as normal for a nice clean.

15) Soothe a poison ivy rash.

Poison ivy spreads via oil within rash blisters. To keep a poison ivy rash from spreading, wash it with dish soap to dry up poison ivy fluid and soothe the itch.

16) Degrease your tools.

Rub a small amount of dish soap over grease spots on your household tools. This will also prevent rust from forming on your items!

17) Pre-treat oil stains on clothing.

Dish soap is an excellent remedy to any oil-based stain. Great examples are butter, motor oil, cooking oil and lipstick. Just apply dish soap directly to the stain, then scrub with a small brush until the oil is removed. Launder normally.

18) Put togethera makeshift ice pack.

Here’s a fun one! Fill a zip-type sandwich bag with dish soap, close and freeze. It stays cold much longer than water and can be re-frozen indefinitely, while remaining malleable.

19) Remove paint from hands.

Paint can be tough to remove from the skin. Scrub with dish soap to dissolve oily paints and then wash as you would normally.

20) Unclog your kitchen sink disposal.

If your dish disposal has taken on more than it can handle, pour approximately 1/4 cup of dish soap down the drain, then follow with boiling water. Let sit. Test the drain.

Which of these tips do you think you’ll start using? Let us know in the comments!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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20 Unexpected Ways to Use Dish Soap

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Trump moved to push through the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but it’s not a done deal.

by ToneyMarra Posted on January 24, 2017

That’s how new news site Axios described it Monday morning, and the news has just gotten worse since then.

A leaked copy of the Trump team’s plan for the EPA calls for slashing its budget, “terminating climate programs,” ending auto fuel-economy standards, and executing “major reforms of the agency’s use of science and economics.”

The Trump administration has frozen EPA grants and contracts, cutting off funding for everything from cleanup of toxic sites to testing of air quality.

EPA employees have been ordered not to share information via social media, press releases, or new website content, Huffington Post reports.

It’s unclear which of these changes are temporary — just in place until Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, gets confirmed — and which might be put in place more permanently.

More bad news for the EPA will be coming: A new team that Trump has put in place to shift the agency’s direction includes three former researchers from Koch-funded think tanks, one former mining lobbyist, and a number of people who have argued against climate action, according to Reuters. And Trump is poised to issue executive orders to weaken pollution rules and cut agency budgets, Vox reports.

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Trump moved to push through the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but it’s not a done deal.

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The Trump administration just hinted at approving controversial pipelines.

by FerminEverard Posted on January 23, 2017

That’s according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

You’re probably used to hearing about how denser cities cut transportation emissions, thanks to reduced driving. This study looks at a different impact: how density affects greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

The researchers projected emissions from buildings under different potential urban densities between now and 2050. They found that denser development patterns lead to lower emissions because people live and work in smaller units that consume less energy. Attached buildings are also more efficient for heating and cooling.

So the PNAS study finds that greater density has the potential to substantially reduce building emissions, more so than other efforts to improve energy efficiency like better weather-proofing.

Unfortunately, global trends are moving in the wrong direction. Cities around the world are growing, but at the same time, urban density is decreasing, as cars enable cities and their suburbs to sprawl outwards.

Governments can adopt policies to make their cities and towns denser, and they’ll need to — not just in the relatively sprawling cities of North America and Europe, but in the fast-growing cities of Asia and the rest of the developing world.

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The Trump administration just hinted at approving controversial pipelines.

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