Tag Archives: trump

Monica Crowley Is the First Casualty of the Trump Administration

by AudryCrotty Posted on January 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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Monica Crowley won’t be joining the Trump administration after all:

“After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities and will not be taking a position in the incoming administration,” she said in a statement. “I greatly appreciate being asked to be part of President-elect Trump’s team and I will continue to enthusiastically support him and his agenda for American renewal.”

I haven’t bothered blogging about this, but just in case you missed the news, it turns out that Crowley is a serial plagiarist. As it happens, I have a pretty high tolerance for the kind of plagiarism that’s usually involved in cases like this (a dozen lines or paragraphs that are semi-copied from other sources in a 500-page book), but it turns out that Crowley also plagiarized great big chunks of her PhD dissertation. That’s a different thing altogether. Not only did she plagiarize a lot, but she did it in a setting where the whole point is to demonstrate original research and original thought. I don’t know if universities can rescind a PhD, but I’ll bet Columbia is looking pretty hard at doing just that.

I doubt that either Trump or Michael Flynn cares about this, but on the other hand, they probably don’t care much about Crowley either. So she’s gone.

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Monica Crowley Is the First Casualty of the Trump Administration

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Evidence of Bizarre Trump-Russia Ties Continues to Ooze Out

by KarriETKHijgayn Posted on January 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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So what’s new on the Trump-Russia front? First up, the Independent tells us that the former MI6 agent behind the now-famous dossier alleging close ties between Russia and the Trump team was dismayed that his findings didn’t generate more action during the presidential campaign:

Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

….By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.

In related news, BuzzFeed says Israel is extremely interested in the possibility of Trump-Russia ties:

“You can trust me that many intelligence agencies are trying to evaluate the extent to which Trump might have ties, or a weakness of some type, to Russia,” one of the intelligence officers said….The officer said part of Israel’s interest in the dossier — and in other intelligence on Trump’s ties to Russia — stems from concern that secrets Israel shares with the Unites States might be fed to Russia.

Earlier this week, Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported that Israeli intelligence officials were questioning whether to continue sharing intelligence with the incoming Trump administration. The report said that during a recent meeting with US intelligence officials, Israel was told that the Russians had “leverages of pressure” to use against Trump. BuzzFeed News could not independently confirm that a meeting had taken place.

Other reports suggest that British intelligence is thinking along the same lines as Israel. And the Daily Beast reports that a group dedicated to hacking the NSA and releasing its prize malware has suddenly gone out of business a few days before Trump’s inauguration:

The Shadow Brokers emerged in August with the announcement that they’d stolen the hacking tools used by a sophisticated computer-intrusion operation known as the Equation Group, and were putting them up for sale to the highest bidder. It was a remarkable claim, because the Equation Group is generally understood to be part of the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations program.

….It soon emerged that the Shadow Brokers really had the goods….Virtually nobody, though, believed the Shadow Brokers’ claim that they were mere hackers trying to sell the exploits for a quick fortune.

The more persuasive theory, supported by no less than Edward Snowden, is that the Shadow Brokers are one of the same Russian government hacking groups now accused of targeting the U.S. election….Under this theory, the Shadow Brokers were part of a tit-for-tat in the intelligence world. The group emerged just as the U.S. began confronting Russia over its election hacking, and then seemed to release its secrets in time with the public thrusts and parries between the two countries….Now, with a new, friendlier administration coming in, Vladimir Putin may be pressing the reset button.

The more I read about this stuff, the harder I find it to believe. It just seems wildly ridiculous, the kind of thing that would barely pass muster on a TV potboiler, let alone in real life. The truth is that I’d probably dismiss it entirely if it weren’t for the vast amount of very public and very strange evidence that Team Trump and Team Putin are very close.

I don’t know. This is all completely outlandish, and I can hardly bring myself to credit it. And yet, there’s an awful lot of evidence that points in the direction of it being true—or at least partly true, anyway. Strange days.

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Evidence of Bizarre Trump-Russia Ties Continues to Ooze Out

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Trump Eyes Ex-Agrichemical Exec to Fill His Final Cabinet Post

by GudrunLevin19 Posted on January 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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When Indiana’s then-governor Mike Pence needed to appoint a new director of his state’s agriculture department back in 2013, he dipped right into the corner offices of the global agrichemical industry. His pick, Ted McKinney, then the director of global corporate affairs for Elanco Animal Health, a division of pharma giant Eli Lilly, had previously been an executive on the government-affairs team for seed/pesticide giant Dow AgroSciences.

Now Pence is the vice president-elect for the incoming Trump administration, which sorely needs to appoint a secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, the only open cabinet slot. And McKinney, recently re-appointed as director of Indiana’s agriculture department, has emerged as the latest in a long line of contenders du jour for the job, Politico reports.

And now the USDA post is really open: Tom Vilsack, the outgoing USDA chief, abruptly quit Friday, informing employees in an email he had served his final day, ABC News reports. Vilsack added some damning commentary on Trump’s delay in choosing his successor: “When that individual is named, he or she will be at a tremendous disadvantage, in terms of getting up to speed on all this department does,” Vilsack said in a statement, according to ABC.

Will McKinney be the one Trump chooses for the burden? In his capacity as an Indiana government official, McKinney—who also serves as director of agribusiness development at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation—is perhaps best known for helping lead an ultimately unsuccessful but “very aggressive” effort to entice DowDuPont to choose Indianapolis as the corporate HQ of its agrichemical arm. McKinney has a well-earned perspective on the advantages of doing agribusiness in Indiana, which sits in the heart of the US corn belt. His most recent private-sector employer, Elanco, is headquartered in the state, as was Dow AgroSciences, until its parent company merged with DuPont last year.

The seed and pesticide industries would certainly have a major ally at the helm of the USDA if McKinney gets the nod. In addition to having worked for Dow for nearly two decades, Mckinney was a co-founder and served as interim executive director for the Council for Biotechnology Information, a group funded by BASF, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta, to promote agriculture biotech. These companies need USDA approval to move novel genetically modified seeds from lab to market. And apparently they have Trump’s ear—on Wednesday, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and his Monsanto counterpart Hugh Grant scored an audience with the incoming president to promote the pending merger, which will need to pass antitrust vetting from Trump’s justice department.

But McKinney isn’t purely an agri-tech nerd. In an address before an annual meeting of an Indiana pork industry group soon after taking the Indiana department of agriculture job, McKinney cited “divine intervention” as one of the main reasons for his move from the corner office to the state bureaucracy. After getting the call from Pence, he explained, “my wife and I prayed about it, it just seemed right. I took the plunge, and here we are…and I’m having a ball!”

Like former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, McKinney appeared on early versions of Trump’s USDA short list, disappeared from discussion for weeks, only to re-emerge with a headline-grabbing visit to Trump Tower, Politico reports.

Fun fact: McKinney’s son, Brad McKinney, works for Mike Torrey, the DC Big Food lobbyist who for a couple of weeks in November led Trump’s USDA transition. Torrey abruptly quit after Trump announced a ban on lobbyists serving in the transition.

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Trump Eyes Ex-Agrichemical Exec to Fill His Final Cabinet Post

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Major Investigation Blasts Chicago Police for Abuses

by LeonoreYXSX Posted on January 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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The US Department of Justice on Friday released a scathing report concluding a 13-month investigation into the conduct of the Chicago Police Department, finding rampant uses of excessive force and other abuses. The investigation was launched in November 2015 after the release of video showing a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, killing the youth who was armed with a knife. The Justice Department reviewed documents related to the Chicago PD’s training policies and procedures and reviewed reports and investigative files for nearly 600 police-shooting and use-of-force incidents between January 2011 and April 2016. It also interviewed community members, city officials, hundreds of police officers, and investigators with the city’s independent police review board. Key findings from the report include:

Chicago police officers routinely used unreasonable force—including deadly force. Officers engaged in tactics that made the need to use force more likely or more risky, such as engaging in unnecessary foot pursuits and shooting at moving vehicles, the report says. In one incident, officers drove up to a man on the street and ordered him to freeze because he was fidgeting with his waistband. The man ran and three officers chased him, shooting as they ran. The officers fired a total of 45 rounds in the pursuit, in which the suspect was killed.
Neither the police department nor the independent police oversight agency adequately investigated use-of-force incidents or misconduct complaints. The Internal Police Review Board—tasked with investigating police misconduct until Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel overhauled the agency last year—found just two of the 409 shootings that occurred in the period covered by the DOJ’s investigation to be unjustified. And despite that Chicago paid more than $500 million in judgments in misconduct cases since 2004, it conducted disciplinary investigations into fewer than half of them. When cases were investigated, the report notes, witnesses and officers often were interviewed long after the incidents occurred, or never at all; officers were heavily coached by union attorneys; and some officers colluded to cover up misconduct.
Training in Chicago’s police academy is insufficient to train recruits to modern standards. In one training that DOJ investigators sat in on, recruits were instructed with a video that was 35 years old, pre-dating Supreme Court decisions that altered use-of-force standards, the report says. The instruction was also inconsistent with police department’s own use-of-force policy, the report said.

Notably absent from the DOJ’s report is an assessment of whether Chicago cops disproportionately target people of color—which the DOJ has repeatedly found with investigations of other cities’ police forces. Asked about this during a press conference on Friday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged that the abuses outlined in the report had a greater impact on minority neighborhoods. The report also discussed how distrust between police and communities of color affected Chicago’s skyrocketing murder rate, noting that the tension made it harder for police to investigate shootings. (Chicago police have made significantly fewer stops and arrests in Chicago in 2015, which President-elect Donald Trump and some city authorities have attributed to increased scrutiny on officers and blamed for the worsening gun violence.)

The release of the report and the agreement reached between the DOJ and Chicago officials, in which both parties agreed to work toward reforms, were reportedly finalized in a hurry, due to concern that the process would stall under the incoming Trump administration. Both president-elect Donald Trump and his attorney general pick, Jeff Sessions, have been critical of federal involvement in local policing issues. Asked if the DOJ’s agreement with Chicago would stick after the change in administration, Lynch said the agreement was not dependent upon “one or two or three” people who lead the DOJ, but on the work of all involved in the process, including Chicago city officials. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson both said they were committed to making sure the reform recommendations made by the DOJ were implemented.

The DOJ announced yesterday that it had also reached a consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department, five months after concluding its investigation into that department following protests over the in-custody death of Freddie Gray. The department also rushed to finalize that decree before Obama leaves office, Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh told the Baltimore Sun.

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Major Investigation Blasts Chicago Police for Abuses

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What Trump’s Interior pick means for federal lands and national parks

by TeganRignall Posted on January 12, 2017

President-elect Trump tapped Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke to head the Department of the Interior, the cabinet position tasked with management of 500 million acres of federal lands — about one-fifth of the entire United States. As Secretary of the Interior, Zinke’s decisions will impact conservation, recreation, wildlife refuges, endangered species, tribal lands, clean air and water, energy development, and the economy, as well as the beloved National Parks.

So who is this guy anyway? Watch our video above.

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What Trump’s Interior pick means for federal lands and national parks

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Democrats Hope That "Mad Dog" Will Calm Trump Down

by ElinorLawrenson Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump has aroused considerable concern among Democrats by nominating a secretary of energy who thinks the Department of Energy shouldn’t exist, a secretary of labor who opposes raising the minimum wage, a secretary of state who’s been cozy with Russia, and an attorney general who has had to spend an awful lot of time convincing people he’s not a racist.

Which made it all the more striking when a Trump Cabinet nominee got a friendly—and even laudatory—reception from the minority party in the Senate when he appeared for a confirmation hearing on Thursday. Retired Gen. James Mattis, up for secretary of defense, requires a congressional waiver to join the Cabinet because he’s been out of the military for fewer than seven years. But Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee appeared eager to grant him that waiver, in part because they see Mattis, nicknamed “Mad Dog,” as a moderating force on Trump’s far-right inner circle.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the top Democrat on the committee, told the retired Marine Corps general that “many have supported the waiver legislation in your confirmation because they believe you will be, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, ‘the saucer that cools the coffee.'”

Even Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who voted against the waiver, told Mattis, “If there were ever a case for a waiver of that principle, it is you, in this moment in our history. I believe that your appreciation for the costs of war in blood, treasure, and lives and the impact on veterans afterward will enable you to be a check on rash and potentially ill-considered use of military force by a president-elect who perhaps lacks that same appreciation.”

Mattis’ thoughts on Russia and NATO helped kept his three-hour confirmation hearing relatively conflict-free, unlike those earlier this week for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions and secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson. Trump has been liberal in his praise of Russian strongman president Vladimir Putin and has called NATO—the military alliance formed in response to threats from the Soviet Union—”obsolete.” Mattis called NATO “the most successful military alliance in modern world history, maybe ever,” and he was willing to castigate Putin and discuss Russian threats to US interests. “The most important thing is that we recognize the reality of what we deal with with Mr. Putin,” he told the committee, “and we recognize that he is trying to break the North Atlantic alliance, and that we take the integrated steps—diplomatic, economic, military, and the alliance steps—to defend ourselves where we must.”

Mattis said he agrees with Trump that the United States should engage Russia and identify areas of cooperation, but that we have to be realistic. “Russia has chosen to be a strategic competitor,” said Mattis, who was removed from his military post in 2013 after the Obama administration felt he was too hawkish on Iran. “They’re an adversary in key areas. I’m all for engagement, but we also have to recognize reality and what Russia is up to. And there’s decreasing areas where can engage cooperatively and increasing areas where we’re going to have to confront Russia.”

He added, “I would not have taken this job if I didn’t believe the president-elect was open to my advice on this or any other matter.”

Advocates of women in the military have expressed concern that Mattis could roll back rules allowing women to serve in combat roles. Mattis co-edited the 2016 book Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military, in which he wrote that “an uninformed public is permitting political leaders to impose an accretion of social conventions that are diminishing the combat power of our military.” But on Thursday, he said, “I have no plan to oppose women in any aspect of our military,” and he later that he had no issues with gays serving openly.

“Frankly, senator,” he said, “I’ve never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.”

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Democrats Hope That "Mad Dog" Will Calm Trump Down

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Republicans Are Coming for Your Free Birth Control

by FabianKAOeeh Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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The process of repealing Obamacare began yesterday in the Senate, and Republicans rejected the amendment that requires insurance companies to cover the full cost of contraceptives in the process.

In 2012, a women’s preventative health care provision within the Affordable Care Act went into effect making birth control free for women with insurance. When it was first rolled out, an estimated 26.9 million women benefited. If the mandate is struck down, it will leave 55 million women without no-copay birth control.

During the budget negotiations that took place Wednesday night, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) penned an amendment to preserve protections for women that were created under the ACA, but it was voted down. The measure aimed to ensure that women receive birth control and mammograms without charge, required insurance companies to cover maternity care, prevented insurance companies from charging women more for preexisting conditions, and sought to even out health care costs between men and women.

“If my colleagues destroy the Affordable Care Act, it will have real, direct, and painful consequences for millions of American women and their families,” Gillibrand said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

The Senate also voted down the preexisting-conditions protection, which prevented insurance companies from considering pregnancy as a preexisting condition.

Last night’s vote is just one piece of what will be a very long process in the effort to repeal Obamacare. Next, the current measure goes to the House, which is expected to approve it on Friday. If that is approved, the House will then draft its own bill, approve it, and return it to the Senate for another vote before it would go to President Trump’s desk.

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Republicans Are Coming for Your Free Birth Control

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The Post-Trump Wave of Anti-Abortion Proposals Just Hit Florida

by ora0exacta7x5 Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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Over the last few weeks, the election of Donald Trump and new Republican control over several states have inspired a wave of anti-abortion proposals. Among the most pervasive have been 20-week abortion bans: Ohio and Kentucky have both passed these in the last month, and they have been proposed in Virginia and now Florida.

On Tuesday, Florida state Rep. Joe Gruters—the former co-chair of Trump’s Florida campaign who began his first term in the Florida House this month—filed the proposed ban, along with sponsor Rep. Don Hahnfeldt.

“Proud to stand up for life in the first bill that I file as a member of the State House,” Gruters wrote on his Facebook page.

Titled the “Florida Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” the bill would make it a third-degree felony to perform an abortion after 20 weeks, unless there is a “serious health risk” for the mother. The bill would also require doctors to file a report about every abortion they perform to the state’s health department and would allow the fathers of the unborn, as well as mothers, to sue their abortion providers for actual or punitive damages.

The bill’s text argues that the ban is necessary because at 20 weeks, fetuses can feel pain. This point is contested by pro-choice advocates and refuted by the vast majority of scientific research.

The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade ruled that a state can only ban abortions after a fetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically considered to be at 24 weeks. The 20-week bans have been one of the anti-abortion movement’s primary strategies for challenging Roe, by calling into question its viability standard. Only about 1.3 percent of abortions take place after 20 weeks, and they usually occur because of an unforeseen medical complication—a risk to the mother’s health, for instance, or the discovery of a severe fetal anomaly in the later stages of pregnancy. They might be necessary for women experiencing major difficulties in their lives, such as domestic violence or the inability to access abortion for financial and other reasons. “Such bans will disproportionately affect young women and women with limited financial resources,” wrote the authors of a 2013 study on women who get later abortions.

“The 20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America,” Ohio Right to Life President Michael Gonidakis told the Columbus Dispatch in December, following the state’s passage of its own 20-week ban.

Lawsuits challenging these bans have made it all the way to the US Supreme Court. In 2014, the Supreme Court declined to review a case challenging Arizona’s 20-week ban, cementing a lower court’s decision that the law was unconstitutional. Reproductive rights advocates have also mounted lawsuits opposing 20-week bans passed in several other states, including North Carolina and Georgia.

Perhaps in anticipation of similar lawsuits to come, Florida’s proposed 20-week ban would also establish a legal defense fund, financed with taxpayer dollars and private donations, which would be managed by Florida’s legal affairs department and would pay for the state attorney general’s legal defense against challenges to the bill.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has not said publicly whether he would support a 20-week abortion ban. But he identifies as pro-life and in the past has supported other restrictions on later abortions. In 2014, Scott signed a bill into law redefining fetal viability to when a fetus can survive outside the womb “through standard medical measures,” further limiting when some later abortions would be permitted.

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The Post-Trump Wave of Anti-Abortion Proposals Just Hit Florida

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The day after VW execs were indicted, Fiat Chrysler has been accused of cheating on diesel emissions.

by RandyKirwin Posted on January 12, 2017

Senate confirmation hearings began on Wednesday for Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil and Trump’s nominee for secretary of state. Tillerson was pressed on the issue of climate change by several senators, including Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, who asked Tillerson if he believes that human activity is the cause.

“The increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is having an effect,” Tillerson said, demonstrating that he at least knows more about the issue than our future president. But, Tillerson added, “Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.” This is false.

Tillerson had less to say about allegations that Exxon, his employer for 40 years, knew about the effect of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere back in the ’70s and failed to disclose the risks to the public or shareholders. When asked about it by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, Tillerson punted and said he didn’t work there anymore: “You’ll have to ask them.”

The nominee did acknowledge that it’s important for the U.S. to stay involved in international climate negotiations and “maintain its seat at the table in the conversation.” As for what he would do at that table, he’s not saying. If he wanted to do anything constructive, first he’d have to convince his boss.

You can read more about the hearing here.

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The day after VW execs were indicted, Fiat Chrysler has been accused of cheating on diesel emissions.

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The Department of Energy has taken a last-minute step to protect scientists from Trump.

by Larue35Xgs Posted on January 12, 2017

Senate confirmation hearings began on Wednesday for Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil and Trump’s nominee for secretary of state. Tillerson was pressed on the issue of climate change by several senators, including Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, who asked Tillerson if he believes that human activity is the cause.

“The increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is having an effect,” Tillerson said, demonstrating that he at least knows more about the issue than our future president. But, Tillerson added, “Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.” This is false.

Tillerson had less to say about allegations that Exxon, his employer for 40 years, knew about the effect of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere back in the ’70s and failed to disclose the risks to the public or shareholders. When asked about it by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, Tillerson punted and said he didn’t work there anymore: “You’ll have to ask them.”

The nominee did acknowledge that it’s important for the U.S. to stay involved in international climate negotiations and “maintain its seat at the table in the conversation.” As for what he would do at that table, he’s not saying. If he wanted to do anything constructive, first he’d have to convince his boss.

You can read more about the hearing here.

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The Department of Energy has taken a last-minute step to protect scientists from Trump.

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