Category Archives: News

Trump administration tells EPA to cut climate page from website, say sources

Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.

The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said.

“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” one of the EPA staffers told Reuters, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Tribes and lawyers are vowing to fight Trump’s pipelines

BuzzFeed reports: President Trump resurrected two massive pipeline projects on Tuesday, drawing ire and threats of legal action from the movement that fought to keep them off US land.

“We will see his administration in court,” Trip Van Noppen, president of the non-profit group Earthjustice that represented the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in challenging the Dakota Access Pipeline, said in a statement. “[Trump] should brace himself to contend with the laws he is flouting, and the millions of Americans who are opposed to these dangerous and destructive projects.”

“We are opposed to reckless and politically motivated development projects, like DAPL, that ignore our treaty rights and risk our water,” the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Dave Archambault II, said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump administration imposes gag order on federal scientists

BuzzFeed reports: The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its main research division from publicly sharing everything from the summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets as it starts to adjust to life under the Trump administration, BuzzFeed News has learned.

According to an email sent Monday morning and obtained by BuzzFeed News, the department told staff — including some 2,000 scientists — at the agency’s main in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), to stop communicating with the public about taxpayer-funded work.

“Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents,” Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for ARS, wrote in a department-wide email shared with BuzzFeed News.

“This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,” she added. [Continue reading…]

Huffington Post reports: The Environmental Protection Agency has frozen its grant programs, according to sources there.

EPA staff has been instructed to freeze all its grants ― an extensive program that includes funding for research, redevelopment of former industrial sites, air quality monitoring and education, among other things ― and told not to discuss this order with anyone outside the agency, according to a Hill source with knowledge of the situation.

An EPA staffer provided the information to the congressional office anonymously, fearing retaliation. [Continue reading…]

Mashable reports: The communications ban directly contradicts scientific integrity policies at each agency that highlight the importance of communication between the public and agencies that are spending tax dollars to conduct government research.

The opening paragraph of the EPA’s integrity policy says it is designed to “promote scientific and ethical standards,” including “communications with the public.” It goes on to add that the policy “prohibits all EPA employees, including scientists, managers, and other agency leadership, from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions.” [Continue reading…]

Scientific American reports: The administration’s latest actions resemble steps taken in Canada by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper while in office from 2006 to 2015; his administration blocked government scientists from speaking with media and explaining their research. Several weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Canadian scientists interviewed by Scientific American warned their U.S. counterparts about the threat of similar restrictions.

“There was a feeling that the government was not interested in expert opinion, and I think it’s the same kind of thing that you are probably going to see with the new [Trump] administration” in the U.S., David Tarasick, a senior research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada (the equivalent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), said last month. Harper’s move drove some Canadian scientists to leave the country to pursue their research. After Harper was voted out Canadian federal scientists last year worked with their union to ensure their contracts would enshrine their ability to speak with the media and the public about their work. [Continue reading…]

Rachel Cleetus at the Union of Concerned Scientists writes: Clean air and clean water are not just “nice to have.”

Pollutants like smog, ozone, and mercury contribute to worsening asthma attacks (especially in young children), heart and lung ailments, and even premature death. What’s more, pollution imposes billions of dollars in costs to the economy in terms of hospital and other health costs, lost work days, lost school days, and other burdens, in addition to pain and suffering.

The EPA was established nearly 50 years ago, under President Nixon, with a mission to protect human health and the environment. Since then, across Republican and Democratic administrations, it has played an important role in responding to environmental disasters, from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident to the catastrophic 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee.

Equally important, the EPA has worked to implement major environmental laws passed by Congress, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which have helped to significantly to drive down harmful pollution and improve the health of Americans.

We need only look to the air quality in Beijing or New Delhi to understand where our country would be without these fundamental protections. Americans need and depend on the EPA to be our watchdog and guardian. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

White House installing ‘senior advisers’ who will shadow each Cabinet secretary and monitor federal agencies

Politico reports: The White House is installing senior aides atop major federal agencies to shadow the administration’s Cabinet secretaries, creating a direct line with loyalists who can monitor and shape White House goals across the federal bureaucracy.

The aides chosen by the White House — given the title of senior adviser in each agency — have already been responsible for hiring at some departments and crafting the blueprint of Trump policy before the Cabinet members win Senate confirmation to take office. They have worked with congressional aides, lobbyists and others seeking influence in the new administration.

The arrangement, described by four people involved in the transition planning, appears designed to help the White House maintain control over its priorities despite pledging to give Cabinet secretaries unusual autonomy. Having senior advisers reporting to both the agency chiefs and the White House could spur early tensions and create conflicts with that pledge of autonomy.

“They want to keep kind of a West Wing-infused attachment to the agencies,” said a person familiar with the arrangement. “There will be tentacles from the White House to these agencies…The effort is to demonstrate that all points lead back to certain people,” such as Trump’s son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, or chief of staff Reince Priebus. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

NATO has our ‘unshakeable commitment’, U.S. defence secretary Mattis vows

The Guardian reports: James Mattis, the new US defence secretary, has reassured his British counterpart that Washington has an “unshakeable commitment” to Nato, despite Donald Trump previously casting the military alliance as obsolete.

During a phone call with Michael Fallon on his first full day in office, Mattis “emphasized the United States’ unshakeable commitment to Nato”, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement.

Ahead of his inauguration, Trump told two European newspapers he had long warned that Nato had “problems.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Russia is targetting French, Dutch and German elections with fake news, EU task force warns

The Telegraph reports: Russia is seeking to influence the outcome of several key elections in European countries this year with fake news, a special task force set up by the European Union has warned.

The EU is reportedly allocating more funds to its East StratCom task force to counter the disinformation, amid fears Russia will target elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands

“There is an enormous, far-reaching, at least partly organized, disinformation campaign against the EU, its politicians and its principles,” a source close to the task force told Germany’s Spiegel magazine.

It is “highly likely” Russia will try to influence European elections “as it did in the US”, the source said.

The number one target is Angela Merkel, who has been subjected to a “bombardment” of fake news over her refugee policy and support for economic sanctions against Russia.

Disinformation is “part of state policy” and a “military tool” for the Kremlin”. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Obama administration released $221M to Palestinians in final hours

The Associated Press reports: Officials say the Obama administration in its waning hours defied Republican opposition and quietly released $221 million to the Palestinian Authority that GOP members of Congress had been blocking.

A State Department official and several congressional aides said the outgoing administration formally notified Congress it would spend the money Friday morning. The official said former Secretary of State John Kerry had informed some lawmakers of the move shortly before he left the State Department for the last time Thursday. The aides said written notification dated Jan. 20 was sent to Congress just hours before Donald Trump took the oath of office.

In addition to the $221 million for the Palestinians, the Obama administration also told Congress on Friday it was going ahead with the release of another $6 million in foreign affairs spending, including $4 million for climate change programs and $1.25 million for U.N. organizations, the congressional aides said. The aides and the State Department official weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Misogynist-in-chief: Trump takes swift action to restrict women’s rights globally

Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday reinstated a global gag rule that bans U.S.-funded groups around the world from discussing abortion, a move that was widely expected but nonetheless dismayed women’s rights advocates.

The rule, which affects American non-governmental organizations working abroad, is one that incoming presidents have used to signal their positions on abortion rights. It was created under U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Trump, an abortion opponent, signed the reinstatement directive at a ceremony in the White House on his fourth day in office. Former President Barack Obama had lifted the gag rule in 2009 when he took office.

“Women’s health and rights are now one of the first casualties of the Trump administration,” said Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity in Washington. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Parliament must vote before UK can trigger Brexit, top court rules

Reuters reports: British Prime Minister Theresa May must give parliament a vote before she can formally start Britain’s exit from the European Union, the UK Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, giving lawmakers who oppose her Brexit plans a shot at amending them.

By a majority of eight to three, the UK’s highest judicial body decided May could not use executive powers known as “royal prerogative” to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and so begin two years of divorce talks.

“The referendum is of great political significance, but the Act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result,” said David Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court.

“So any change in the law to give effect to the referendum must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by an Act of Parliament.”

However, the judges did remove one major potential obstacle for the British government, saying May did not need the approval of the UK’s devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before triggering Brexit. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Pentagon denies claim of a joint U.S.-Russian airstrike on Syria

The Daily Beast reports: No, U.S. and Russian warplanes are not flying combat missions together over Syria. Yet.

That startling claim, which spread across the U.S. news media on the afternoon of Jan. 23, 2017, began with a vague and misleading tweet by the Associated Press that was apparently based in part on a misreading of reports by Russian state media.

“BREAKING: Russian Defense Ministry says its warplanes have flown first combat mission in Syria with U.S.-led coalition aircraft,” the A.P. tweeted at 12:18 P.M. EST.

The Pentagon flatly denied the claim. “The Department of Defense is not coordinating airstrikes with the Russian military in Syria,” department spokesman Eric Pahon told The Daily Beast. “DoD maintains a channel of communication with the Russian military focused solely on ensuring the safety of aircrews and de-confliction of coalition and Russian operations in Syria.”

The A.P.’s report is inaccurate, but the wire service’s confusion is perhaps understandable — and, for Moscow, might even be the whole point. It’s not hard to see how Russia benefits from news reports claiming that the United States and Russia are fighting side-by-side in Syria.

After all, U.S. President Donald Trump seems to be pushing the Pentagon in that direction. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Fake popularity: Trump’s cheering entourage deployed for his CIA appearance; majority of workforce declined invitation to attend

CBS News reports: U.S. government sources tell CBS News that there is a sense of unease in the intelligence community after President Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters on Saturday.

An official said the visit “made relations with the intelligence community worse” and described the visit as “uncomfortable.”

Authorities are also pushing back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for the president. They say the first three rows in front of the president were largely made up of supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

An official with knowledge of the make-up of the crowd says that there were about 40 people who’d been invited by the Trump, Mike Pence and Rep. Mike Pompeo teams. The Trump team originally expected Rep. Pompeo, R-Kansas, to be sworn in during the event as the next CIA director, but the vote to confirm him was delayed on Friday by Senate Democrats. Also sitting in the first several rows in front of the president was the CIA’s senior leadership, which was not cheering the remarks [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Europe’s far-right leaders unite at dawn of the Trump era

Time reports: After a few weeks of reading online about Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency, Marco Kopping, a 36-year-old apprentice at a car-parts supplier near Frankfurt, decided to get involved in German politics. He had never sympathized with a political party before, let alone joined one. But in December he received his glossy membership card from Alternative for Germany (AfD), one of the far-right movements now riding the updraft from Trump’s ascent. What drove him, Kopping says, “was the feeling of a revolution.” He didn’t want to be left behind.

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often-glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.

The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD’s invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s Inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia under investigation

The Wall Street Journal reports: U.S. counterintelligence agents have investigated communications that President Donald Trump’s national security adviser had with Russian officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Flynn is the first person inside the White House under Mr. Trump whose communications are known to have faced scrutiny as part of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Treasury Department to determine the extent of Russian government contacts with people close to Mr. Trump.

It isn’t clear when the counterintelligence inquiry began, whether it produced any incriminating evidence or if it is continuing. Mr. Flynn, a retired general who became national security adviser with Mr. Trump’s inauguration, plays a key role in setting U.S. policy toward Russia.

The counterintelligence inquiry aimed to determine the nature of Mr. Flynn’s contact with Russian officials and whether such contacts may have violated laws, people familiar with the matter said.

A key issue in the investigation is a series of telephone calls Mr. Flynn made to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., on Dec. 29. That day, the Obama administration announced sanctions and other measures against Russia in retaliation for its alleged use of cyberattacks to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacks on Democratic Party officials to try to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Officials also have examined earlier conversations between Mr. Flynn and Russian figures, the people familiar with the matter said. Russia has previously denied involvement in election-related hacking.

In a statement Sunday night, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The traditional way of reporting on a president is dead — Trump’s press secretary killed it

Margaret Sullivan writes: The presidency is not a reality show, but President Trump on his first full day in office made clear that he’s still obsessed with being what he once proudly called “a ratings machine.”

He cares enough about it to send his press secretary, Sean Spicer, out to brazenly lie to the media in his first official briefing.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said. And he added a scolding about widespread reports that differ from his evidence-free assessment: “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

Crowd size experts estimate Trump’s audience at far fewer than the million or more that Trump is claiming, and at far less than the size of the following day’s women’s march, which the new president has said little about. And side-by-side photographs showed the contrast between the comparatively thin gathering for Trump’s inauguration and the record-setting one in 2009 for former president Barack Obama’s first.

Ari Fleischer, a former George W. Bush press secretary, saw Saturday’s bizarre session for what it was.

“This is called a statement you’re told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching,” Fleischer wrote. (MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski pegged it as “Sean Spicer’s first hostage video.”) [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Saving America from Donald Trump

In an editorial, The Observer says: In the event, it was even worse than expected. Swaggering into power on the steps of Washington’s Capitol building, Donald Trump turned his back on grace, good manners, common sense, national healing and consensual politics – and opted for division. Spurning a unique opportunity to bind the nation’s wounds – his inauguration as 45th US president – Trump chose instead to reiterate the resentful, grievance-packed messages of his election campaign. This dreadful, chilling performance, excruciating in its banality and bile, has presented the three-quarters of US adults who did not vote for him with an urgent dilemma: how to head off “American carnage”, to use Trump’s unhappy words. To paraphrase the 35th president, John Kennedy, in his inaugural address in 1961: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do to save your country from Donald Trump.”

The task will be a supremely challenging one, for Trump is as bullishly self-confident as he is ignorant. He will not be easily deflected or denied. And the crass, know-nothing nationalism that lay at the heart of Friday’s speech is a powerful force. Like America’s new leader, it appeals to the darker side of human nature, bolstering the insidious claims of jealousy, envy, greed and hubris. It thrives on fear, chauvinism, discrimination and not always subliminal notions of ethnic, racial and moral superiority. It is a product of our times. But it is not too much to say Trump’s ranting scream of “America first, America first!” carries an echo of the “Sieg Heil” (hail victory) of another, not-forgotten era of brutish nationalist triumphalism.

For Americans, the extent of the challenge is already clear, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Trump withheld any word of thanks for the considerable work of his predecessor, Barack Obama, over the past eight years, a churlish omission perhaps unprecedented in the history of the American republic. When it came to the substance of his speech, common sense was as lacking as common courtesy. Trump does not have an original thought in his head. He only seems able to speak in slogans, in the same way he only writes in Twitter-length soundbites. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Foreign payments to Trump firms violate constitution, suit will claim

The New York Times reports: A team of prominent constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers intends to file a lawsuit Monday morning alleging that President Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his hotels and other business operations to accept payments from foreign governments.

The lawsuit is among a barrage of legal actions against the Trump administration that have been initiated or are being planned by major liberal advocacy organizations. Such suits are among the few outlets they have to challenge the administration now that Republicans are in control of the government.

In the new case, the lawyers argue that a provision in the Constitution known as the Emoluments Clause amounts to a ban on payments from foreign powers like the ones to Mr. Trump’s companies. They cite fears by the framers of the Constitution that United States officials could be corrupted by gifts or payments.

The suit, which will not seek any monetary damages, will ask a federal court in New York to order Mr. Trump to stop taking payments from foreign government entities. Such payments, it says, include those from patrons at Trump hotels and golf courses, as well as loans for his office buildings from certain banks controlled by foreign governments, and leases with tenants like the Abu Dhabi tourism office, a government enterprise. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Fake presidency: White House pushes ‘alternative facts.’ Here are the real ones

The New York Times reports: Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the White House had put forth “alternative facts” to ones reported by the news media about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd.

She made this assertion — which quickly went viral on social media — a day after Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, had accused the news media of reporting falsehoods about the inauguration and Mr. Trump’s relationship with the intelligence agencies.

In leveling this attack, the president and Mr. Spicer made a series of false statements.

Here are the facts. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Kellyanne Conway calls former CIA director (who served presidents of both parties) ‘a partisan political hack’

Politico reports: Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, on Sunday morning called former CIA Director John Brennan a “partisan political attack” for criticizing the president’s speech before the agency on Saturday.

Brennan “sounded like a partisan political hack about the president of the United States,” Conway said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I think everybody needs to take a step back and a very deep breath…and think about what their words are,” Conway said.

Brennan, through a spokesman, on Saturday lashed out at Trump, saying he was “deeply saddened” by Trump’s speech in front of the Langley memorial wall where his focus seemed to stray from the CIA agents in attendance to his own accomplishments.

“Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” Brennan’s former of deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro said in a statement on Saturday. “Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail