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Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

by BarbaraNewcomer Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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In the coming days, crowds of Donald Trump supporters will take to the streets to welcome the new president, including at Thursday’s Make America Great Again rally at the Lincoln Memorial and Friday’s inaugural parade outside the White House.

But a whole lot of people are organizing to protest Trump, including more than 1 million people who are expected to participate in women’s marches around the world.

Here are highlights from some of the protests. Come back here for more news as we update this story.

January 20

Mother Jones reporters are on the scene covering the protests ahead of today’s swearing-in ceremony:

January 19

Tensions are high as protesters confront Trump supporters attending the “Deploraball,” an inauguration celebration at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Protesters rally outside the Trump International Hotel in New York, joined by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin, and other high-profile speakers.

January 18

Hundreds gather for a “Queer Dance Party” outside of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s Chevy Chase house. Firas Nasr, founder of WERK for Peace, tells DCist that the event is meant to show that “homophobia and transphobia is wrong and should be resisted.” As Indiana’s governor, Pence had a poor record on LGBT rights, signing a bill to protect businesses that discriminated against gay people.

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Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

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Surprise! WikiLeaks’ Assange Backs Trump on Russia Hacking Report

by KaliSeton93839 Posted on January 9, 2017

Mother Jones

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During a live press conference broadcast from the Ecuadorian embassy in London via Twitter’s livestream app Persicope, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Monday blasted the recent US intelligence report on Russian hacking during the 2016 election.

“It is, frankly, quite embarrassing to the reputation of the US intelligence services to be putting out something that claims to be a report like that,” Assange said. “This is a press release. It is clearly designed for political effect and US intelligence have been politicized by the Obama administration in the production of this report and a number of other statements.”

Assange called the report a “political attack cannon against Donald Trump” and a way “to defend the reason why the Democratic Party lost.” And he claimed that its true purpose was to bolster certain officials within the Democratic Party and “delegitimize the election of Donald Trump.”

Assange’s press conference comes three days after the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report outlining its assessment of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign via hacks of US political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The materials were stolen from those organizations by Russian intelligence, according to the report, and then passed to WikiLeaks, but it does not specify whether this occurred through an intermediary. An online persona known as “Guccifer 2.0” claimed credit for the DNC hack and for passing the information along to WikiLeaks and also for providing the material to media outlets and reporters.

“Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity,” the declassified report stated, adding that the material published by WikiLeaks did “not contain any evident forgeries.” The report stated that Russian intelligence fed the materials to WikiLeaks but didn’t say how, or whether it was through a third-party. The Washington Post reported Thursday night that US intelligence had identified the “actors” involved in getting the materials to WikiLeaks.

Assange has consistently denied that the materials came from the Russian government and addressed the issue again on Monday.

“We haven’t said we know or don’t know our sources,” he said. “We have made one statement, which is that our sources in the US election-related matter are not a state party.” Assange noted the “incredible care” with which WikiLeaks speaks about its sources, but this case “does not sufficiently threaten our sources to make this very bland disclosure.” With a “state” source, however, “we would have a lot less concern in attempting to protect them.”

Assange’s explanation seems to leave the door open that an intermediary passed the material from Russian intelligence to WikiLeaks.

Assange also discussed the penchant for outgoing administrations to destroy information on the way out the door and said WikiLeaks’ recent offer of $30,000 for information that leads to “the arrest or exposure of Obama admin sic officials destroying info sic,” is an effort to preserve information that belongs to the public. He implored government employees with access to data to grab it (not mentioning that doing so is a serious crime).

“Our request to system administrators in the Obama administration, and this goes for other administrations around the world, is take the data,” he said. “Just take it now, keep it under your bed, or with your mother, and then you can give that to WikiLeaks or other journalists at your leisure. Get a hold of that history and protect it because that is something that belongs to humanity and does not belong to a political party.”

Assange blasted President Obama for his administration’s treatment of whistleblowers but said that things weren’t likely to improve under a President Trump.

“While there are some anti-DC elements in the Trump cabinet and a lot in his base, very quickly, based on the history of all previous administrations, the Donald Trump administration will form its own establishment and enter into a power-sharing relationship with the existing powers in DC,” Assange said. “No system of authority likes those who undermine its authority.”

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Surprise! WikiLeaks’ Assange Backs Trump on Russia Hacking Report

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Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

by FannieCrabtree Posted on January 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Did Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign tip the election to Donald Trump? In the LA Times today, Noah Bierman and Brian Bennett have this to say:

The truth is no one knows for sure because the election was so close in so many states that no one factor can be credited or blamed, especially in last year’s highly combustible campaign.

This is exactly backward. The fact that the election was so close means that lots of things might have tipped the election all by themselves. The Russian hacking is one of them. Consider Bierman and Bennett’s own case:

Extensive news coverage of the how the leaked emails showed political machinations by Democratic Party operatives often drowned out Clinton’s agenda….English-language news channel Russia Today…posted a video on YouTube in early November, for example. Called “Trump Will Not Be Permitted to Win,” it featured Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, and was watched 2.2 million times….U.S. intelligence officials say anti-Clinton stories and posts flooded social media from the Internet Research Agency near St. Petersburg, which the report described as a network of “professional trolls” led by a Putin ally.

Putin’s most tangible victory may have come last summer. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was forced to quit her post as Democratic National Committee chairwoman after emails posted on Wikileaks showed that supposedly neutral DNC officials had backed Clinton over her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the primaries.

….In October, Trump similarly seized on leaked emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. They showed that Donna Brazile, a former CNN commentator who replaced Wasserman Schultz at the DNC, had shared a pair of questions with Clinton’s team before a televised candidates’ forum and debate….The leak showed nothing illegal. But it bolstered the idea that Clinton was a Washington insider who benefited from fellow elites.

….The most damaging leaks for Clinton may have been transcripts of excerpts of her highly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, released in October….There were no smoking guns in the leaks. But they included her admission that her growing wealth since she and Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 had made her “kind of far removed” from the anger and frustration many Americans felt after the 2008 recession. She also called for “a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future, with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it.”

That’s a lot of stuff! Does it seem likely that all of this, plus the fact that it kept Clinton’s email woes front and center, made a difference of 1 percent in a few swing states? Sure, I’d say so. Did other things make a difference too? Yes indeed. But given how close the election was, there’s a pretty good chance that Putin’s campaign of cyber-chaos had enough oomph to swing things all by itself.

I’m a little surprised this hasn’t produced more panic. In the United States I understand why it hasn’t: Democrats don’t want to sound like sore losers and Republicans don’t care as long as their guy won. But what about the rest of the world? It’s been common knowledge for a while that Russia does this kind of stuff, but their actions in the US election represent a quantum leap in how far they’re willing to go. And there’s not much doubt that Putin will keep at it.

After all, it worked a treat. And thanks to a gullible press and normal partisan politics, it’ll keep working. The next leak will get as much attention as these did, and the one after that too. We have no societal defense against this stuff.

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Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

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Trump Hires an Adviser He Once Called an Untrustworthy Liar

by BradyDunlea Posted on January 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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A decade after deriding her as irresponsible and dishonest, Donald Trump has hired the controversial reality star-turned-political operative Omarosa Manigault to advise him in the White House. The incoming Trump administration announced Wednesday afternoon that Manigault will serve as assistant to the president and director of communications for the office of public liaison.

The hire marks the latest twist in the former Apprentice contestant’s longstanding relationship with her reality television boss. Manigault was a prominent surrogate for Trump during the campaign, helping organize a meeting between Trump and several black pastors in 2015. Last year, she served as the vice-chair of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, a grassroots network of nonwhite Trump supporters unaffiliated with the campaign. In July, Manigault officially joined the Trump campaign as the director of African American outreach, overseeing an outreach effort that was frequently criticized for relying on stereotypes of black communities. She currently serves as a member of Trump’s transition team.

Despite Manigault’s extensive work for his campaign, Trump hasn’t always had the highest opinion of her. In a 2004 interview with Playboy, Trump said that she was “difficult for people to handle” during her time on The Apprentice and that she was a far better reality TV villain than he had expected. “I couldn’t believe she was lying on camera like she was,” he said. “She’s got a problem or something.

When asked if he would ever serve as a business reference for Manigault, Trump said that he would not recommend her for an executive position, but that he “might serve as a reference for her to be on a soap opera.” He added, “She’s wonderful on TV, and she gets ratings. I just wouldn’t necessarily want her running my church.”

Manigault’s new gig won’t be her first time working for a presidential administration. She previously worked in the Clinton administration, where, according to People, she was fired from four different jobs in a two-year span. The experience didn’t seem to sour Manigault on Democrats: Before Trump jumped into the race, she eagerly voiced her support of Hillary Clinton.

But once her former boss entered the fray, it didn’t take long for Manigault to change her tune and her party. “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump,” she told PBS’s Frontline last year in an interview before the presidential election. “It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”

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Trump Hires an Adviser He Once Called an Untrustworthy Liar

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ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

by GrantBramlett Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Part three of our series of charts from the Economic Report of the President is all about banking. Mostly, it’s a trip down memory lane. Here’s a look at the worldwide market in derivatives over the past couple of decades:

The volume of derivatives went from $10 trillion to $35 trillion in two years starting right before the market crashed. Here’s another perspective on that:

In 1990, shadow banking was about the same size as the traditional banking sector. By 2007 it was more than twice as big. Just before the crash, shadow banking comprised two-thirds of the entire banking industry and it was almost entirely unregulated. This is why I was happy that Hillary Clinton at least mentioned shadow banking during the campaign.

Here’s how all this affected tradition banks:

In 2007, losses from trading amounted to about $30 billion. By 2009 that had skyrocketed to about $100 billion—and that’s in addition to about $40 billion in traditional loan losses. This is what happens when you start with a housing market that’s already in bubble territory and then egg it on with insane levels of rocket science derivatives, most of them unregulated bastard offspring of the shadow banking sector.

So what’s happened since then? We had a huge crash, the Fed instituted higher capital ratios for “systemically important financial institutions,” and we passed the Dodd-Frank reforms. Here’s what banks look like now:

Before the Great Recession, the biggest banks (green line) had Tier 1 equity ratios of about 7 percent. That’s why they couldn’t weather the crash. Today they’re above 12 percent. Is that enough? Maybe not. But it’s a helluva lot better than it used to be.

Finally, here’s an intriguing chart that shows one of the specific consequences of Dodd-Frank:

Most single-name derivatives are now cleared through a central clearinghouse, which makes it easy for traders to cancel out mirror-image positions they hold. This is called “compression,” and it reduces the total volume of derivatives and increases the safety of the financial system. Today, derivatives worth $200 trillion (notional) are compressed out of existence each year.

Needless to say, Republicans are hellbent on repealing Dodd-Frank. Sure, it makes the banking system safer and helps protect consumers, but big banks don’t like it, so that’s that. The party of Donald Trump, the working man’s president, will do whatever Wall Street tells them to do. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

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ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

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Donald Trump Flips Out Yet Again

by ScotReese2858449 Posted on November 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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I still wake up each morning thinking it can’t really be true that Donald Trump will be president of the United States in less than eight weeks. I mean, he’s…he’s—he’s a willfully ignorant crackpot. He’s a ridiculous game show host. He’s a five-year-old in a 70-year-old body. He’s addicted to gossip and TV. He’s a trust fund kid who thinks he’s a great businessman. He doesn’t have the attention span to read an actual book. He loves conspiracy theories. And he’s got an ego so fragile it ought to be packed in styrofoam peanuts.

Today, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny said he was looking for evidence that Trump’s allegation of massive voter fraud was true. This instantly sent Trump into a furious tantrum, prompting one of his periodic retweet spasms. Let’s take a look at who he chose to retweet. First up is @HighonHillcrest:

Who is @HighonHillcrest? Earlier today he tweeted that Mitt Romney is the “worst kind of traitor.” A few days ago he wrote this: “When RACIST THUG @angela_rye screams, annoying voice gets higher.” (Don Lemon and Van Jones are also racist thugs. Apparently all blacks on CNN are racist thugs.) And this: “FREEDOM OF RELIGION was meant to apply to religions which do NOT advocate killing non-converts.” Next up is @JoeBowman12:

Who is @JoeBowman12? A few weeks ago he was promoting the conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton has a mixed-race son: “CNN Orders Censorship Blackout on Danney Williams story ( Bill Clinton’s alleged son ) http://Infowars.com/show.” And: “Bill Clinton ‘Son’ Tells Hillary: Step Aside http://www.infowars.com.” And: “Bill Clinton’s ‘son’ Danney Williams conducts his FIRST TV interview LIVE at http://Infowars.com/show – DON’T MISS IT!” Next up is @Filibuster:

Who is @Filibuster? He’s a 16-year-old who lives in Beverly Hills. Next up is @sdcritic:

Who is @sdcritic? Earlier today, in response to the attack at Ohio State, he tweeted: “#IslamIsADeathCult #IslamIsTheProblem #BanMuslimsNotGuns #BanSharia #IslamIsCancer #Muslims did not come to America to be Americans! WAKEUP!” And: “#OhioState: You MUST understand #studentfeed that #Islamists are barbaric 3rd world monsters ruthless subhumans.America has brought this 2U!” Finally, Trump added a last word of his own:

What kind of person is so unhinged that even though he won a presidential election, he goes nuts when he’s reminded that he lost the popular vote and (a) demands that all his minions start writing sycophantic tweets about his historic landslide victory, (b) continues stewing about it anyway and fabricates an allegation of massive voter fraud perpetrated by the Democratic Party, (c) flips out at an anodyne segment from a CNN reporter about his lies, and (d) spends his evening hunched over his smartphone rounding up a motley crew of racists, nutbags, and teenagers to assure him that he’s right?

What kind of person does this? And how easy is it to manipulate someone like this? We have a helluva scary four years ahead of us.

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Donald Trump Flips Out Yet Again

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Republicans of Color Who Opposed Trump Find Themselves on the Margins

by NoelChildress8 Posted on November 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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If the presidential election had gone according to expectations, Donald Trump’s loss might have been a win for one group of Republicans. Prominent Republicans of color who had been critical of Trump’s racially divisive campaigning and poor minority outreach efforts were positioned to become powerful voices in the party, working to pull it back onto the path outlined in the 2012 post-election “autopsy” report that called for increasing its appeal to nonwhite constituencies.

But with Trump’s surprise victory, these potential leaders now find themselves standing on the margins, wondering how or even if they should engage with a party whose voters delivered the presidency to a man who often appeared hostile to the concerns of minorities.

“If he governs the way he campaigns, then I will have no part of that,” says Charles Badger, a black GOP political strategist who worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign as director of coalitions, leading its outreach efforts to African Americans, Asian Americans, and issue-based voters. “If that is the future of the Republican Party—if it’s going to be protectionism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and discriminatory acts from voting rights to policing—if that’s what it’s going to be, then I’m having no part of that whatsoever. I’ll just be a man without a party if I have to.”

Trump’s unorthodox presidential campaign disrupted much of the Republican Party, but for Republicans of color, the damage was considerably worse, fully exposing the racism, xenophobia, and bigotry the GOP had once said it would leave in the past. As the general election approached, some nonwhite Republicans became outspoken opponents of the Republican presidential nominee, arguing that he would damage the GOP for years to come.

Badger was among them, criticizing Trump on social media and joining Republicans for Clinton in 2016 (R4C16), a grassroots network urging conservative voters to pick Hillary Clinton over Trump. Even Michael Steele, the first African American chairman of the Republican National Committee, couldn’t bring himself to vote for the party’s presidential nominee, announcing at a Mother Jones forum in October that he wouldn’t back Trump.

“I think that Trump’s victory makes addressing the GOP’s approach to race even more stark and important,” Steele says now. “The electorate of this country is changing. The demographic makeup of this country is changing, and the party had better get on the front end of that change and lead it as opposed to following it.” He says Republican critics of Trump must continue to apply pressure if they want to see the president-elect change his tone. But Steele, who led the national party from 2009 to 2011, could find himself with limited influence under the famously vindictive Trump.

Hughey Newsome, a black Republican, attended the 2012 Republican National Convention and was heartened by the party’s outreach to minority voters. This year, he was so disgusted by Trump’s campaign that he voted for a third-party candidate and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post after the election explaining why he was leaving the party. “I can no longer associate with a party that supported such a man and such an indifferent campaign,” he wrote.

“He isn’t willing to communicate with me, communicate with people that think like me,” Newsome says. He believes the Trump campaign worked to intensify white Americans’ fears of minorities. “Instead of addressing those things and wiping them out of the party, they’ve placated those feelings to make sure those people don’t feel ostracized. In my mind, those feelings need to be ostracized.”

Prominent Latino Republicans feel just as frustrated with the direction of the party. Artemio Muniz, the chairman of the Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans, criticized Trump’s call to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants and build a wall on the Mexican border. “During the election period, the rhetoric absolutely was a concern,” he says. Trump’s actions since winning the election have hardly been reassuring. Muniz says that Trump’s decision to include Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—a prominent immigration hardliner—on the presidential transition team has heightened his concerns that the administration will follow through on Trump’s aggressive campaign promises. (On Monday, Kobach was photographed outside of Trump’s New Jersey golf club holding copies of a plan that would broaden the definition of “criminal aliens” during Trump’s first year in office.)

Despite his concerns and his continued opposition to Trump’s position on immigration, Muniz is cautiously optimistic that Congress will be able to keep Trump in line. If Trump moderates his position on deporting undocumented immigrants without criminal records, Muniz would be open to working with him. But Muniz also says that if the Republican Party doesn’t change its stance on immigration soon, it will suffer the electoral consequences of alienating large numbers of Hispanic voters.

Badger doesn’t see any signs that the Trump administration will be more receptive to minority concerns than the Trump campaign.

“My initial reaction to the election result was disbelief,” he says. “Two weeks later, my disbelief hasn’t waned very much.” He was particularly dismayed by Trump’s appointment of Stephen Bannon as chief strategist. Bannon previously ran Breitbart News, which he proudly described to Mother Jones as “the platform for the alt-right,” the fringe movement dominated by white nationalists.

But Badger also acknowledges that Trump’s rise was facilitated by the Republican Party. “Trump is the GOP’s chickens coming home to roost,” he says. “When you spend 40 to 50 years doing racially coded stuff in your campaigns, Trump is the illegitimate child that’s born of that. He is the logical consequence of a lot of this coded language and dog-whistle stuff.”

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Republicans of Color Who Opposed Trump Find Themselves on the Margins

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Gen. Michael Flynn’s Slow Descent Into Madness

by SanfordTomlinso Posted on November 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Dana Priest tells us today about Donald Trump’s new National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn:

A lot of reporters and other civilians found Mike, as everyone called him, refreshing. A plucky Irish Catholic kid from Rhode Island, he wasn’t impressed by rank. He told his junior officers to challenge him in briefings. “You’d hear them say, ‘Boss, that’s nuts,’ ” one former colleague said.

….The greatest accomplishment of Flynn’s military career was revolutionizing the way that the clandestine arm of the military, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), undertook the killing and capture of suspected terrorists and insurgents in war zones….Stanley McChrystal, who was appointed to run JSOC in 2003, brought Flynn in as his intelligence chief….He “boxed him in,” someone who had worked with both men told me last week, by encouraging Flynn to keep his outbursts in check and surrounding him with subordinates who would challenge the unsubstantiated theories he tended to indulge.

Sounds like a good guy who just needs a little direction. So, um, what happened?

In 2012, Flynn became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency….“He made a lot of changes,” one close observer of Flynn’s time at the D.I.A. told me. “Not in a strategic way—A to Z—but back and forth.”

Flynn also began to seek the Washington spotlight. But, without loyal junior officers at his side to vet his facts, he found even more trouble. His subordinates started a list of what they called “Flynn facts,” things he would say that weren’t true….Flynn’s temper also flared. He berated people in front of colleagues.

….Flynn had been on the job just eighteen months when James Clapper told him he had to go….Flynn began saying that he had been fired because President Obama disagreed with his views on terrorism and wanted to hide the growth of ISIS. I haven’t found anyone yet who heard him say this while he was still in the military….As Flynn’s public comments became more and more shrill, McChrystal, Mullen, and others called Flynn to urge him to “tone it down,” a person familiar with each attempt told me. But Flynn had found a new boss, Trump, who enlisted him in the fight against the Republican and Democratic Party establishments.

Well, I guess it will all work out. Donald Trump will provide a firm hand at the—wait. What’s this?

President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month….A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won.

….Officials involved in the Trump transition team cautioned against assigning any significance to the briefing schedule that the president-elect has set so far, noting that he has been immersed in the work of forming his administration, and has made filling key national security posts his top priority. But others have interpreted Trump’s limited engagement with his briefing team as an additional sign of indifference from a president-elect who has no meaningful experience on national security issues.

So Trump thinks that his work schedule will lighten up after he actually becomes president? And then he’ll have time to get up to speed on all the stuff he doesn’t know? And rein in Flynn at the same time?

We are so screwed.

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Gen. Michael Flynn’s Slow Descent Into Madness

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Meet the Dark-Money Millionaire Donald Trump Just Tapped to Be Education Secretary

by CyrilTully109 Posted on November 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly chosen Betsy DeVos to be his first secretary of education—and, according to Bloomberg‘s Jennifer Jacobs, the Michigan Republican has accepted the job.

Former Mother Jones reporter Andy Kroll profiled the DeVos family and its “plan to defund the left” in these pages back in 2014:

The Devoses sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. “There’s not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn’t known the DeVoses,” says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

Betsy is a member of the conservative clan through her marriage to Dick DeVos.

Betsy, who is 56, is the political junkie in the relationship. She got her start in politics as a “scatter-blitzer” for Gerald Ford’s 1976 presidential campaign, which bused eager young volunteers to various cities so they could blanket them with campaign flyers. In the ’80s and ’90s, Betsy climbed the party ranks to become a Republican National Committeewoman, chair numerous US House and Senate campaigns in Michigan, lead statewide party fundraising, and serve two terms as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. In 2003, she returned at the request of the Bush White House to dig the party out of $1.2 million in debt. A major proponent of education reform, Betsy serves on the boards of the American Federation for Children, a leading advocate of school vouchers, and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, which supports online schools.

Read the whole profile.

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Meet the Dark-Money Millionaire Donald Trump Just Tapped to Be Education Secretary

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

by CharaGentry Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

In his first news conference since Donald Trump’s election victory last week, President Barack Obama expressed hope that the new president-elect would “send some signals of unity” to groups around the country, especially minorities and women who remain fearful after Trump’s extreme campaign promises. Such anxieties were heightened on Sunday, after Trump announced that Stephen Bannon, who has propagated white nationalist sentiment as head of Breitbart News, would become his chief strategist and senior counsel.

“It would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making,” Obama said on Monday when asked about Bannon’s appointment. “The people have spoken.”

Although he was given a number of opportunities to criticize Trump, Obama avoided any negative remarks and repeated his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition of power. “Do I have concerns?” he said. “Absolutely.” But he added that he believed the former reality television star and real estate mogul would be “pragmatic” moving forward.

“Campaigning is different from governing,” Obama said. “I think he recognizes that. I think he’s sincere in wanting to be a successful president.”

On the eve of his final trip abroad as president, Obama also called on Democrats to reflect on the party’s loss and prepare to be better organized for future elections.

“I believe we have better ideas, but good ideas don’t matter if people don’t hear them,” Obama said. “Given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere, we have to work at a grassroots level.”

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

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