so far good news ! .. no I haven't even gotten past the top four .. but I liking what I'm reading ... .. so sad for us .. but, stupid people voting for stupid people ........ trailing off
A leaked Trump order suggests he’s planning to deport more legal immigrants for using social services
Build a wall around public benefits, and make immigrants’ relatives pay for it.
Updated by Dara Linddara@vox.com Jan 31, 2017, 3:40pm EST
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Donald Trump upended American immigration policy with three executive orders in his first week as president. He may not be done yet.
The Washington Post obtained two draft executive orders the Trump administration is reportedly considering, both of which (in title and content) resemble documents Vox wrote about and published last week.
One order deals with work visas; the other addresses social services for legal immigrants who are already in the United States. It’s an indication that the many immigration restrictions Trump has signed are not the full scope of what key advisers have discussed. The draft dealing with legal immigrants’ use of social services could have further-reaching implications for legal immigrants currently in the US than anything the president has already signed.
Legal immigrants currently get access to some public benefits in some circumstances. But the federal government — already, under existing law — can bar someone from coming to the US, or from becoming a permanent resident, if there’s any evidence he or she will become a “public charge.”
Currently, the federal government looks at use of cash benefits (like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) when it’s making “public charge” decisions, but not in-kind benefits like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
People who use any of those benefits and are in the US on visas would be subject to deportation. And the order would even require the person who sponsored an immigrant into the US to reimburse the federal government for any benefits the immigrant used (something that the government can theoretically ask for in individual cases now, but rarely does).
Updated by Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Jan 31, 2017, 11:10am EST
[...]
This is wrong in every particular. Obama’s Iraqi visa policy in 2011 did not ban Iraqis from entering the country. Obama’s immigration policy did not treat people with passports from the seven countries as unusually dangerous terrorism threats. And Obama’s policies never approached anything like the breadth, cynicism, and incompetence of Trump’s executive order.
But the way in which the “Obama did it first” defense has been taken up by conservatives is extremely telling. By making this issue about the liberal media smearing Trump, they are normalizing him — making this a standard left-right fight rather than something extraordinary. By providing Trump cover, these conservatives — some of whom once identified as NeverTrumpers — are aiding and abetting Trump’s assault on America’s historic status as a welcoming safe harbor for immigrants and refugees. http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/31/14444862/obama-refugee-ban-2011
.. and so lowering the level of admiration and hope millions of ordinary citizens worldwide had felt for the United States of America .. that's inarguable, i believe .. while providing satisfaction to people as ISIS ..
On this Wednesday, Feb. 1st 2017 edition of the Alex Jones Show [with appearances by Jerome Corsi and Mark Dice, and Roger Stone guest-hosting the fourth hour with guests Franklin Brothers, Tyler Nixon and Ezili Danto], Alex Jones broadcasts live from LA after flying there for an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. We analyze Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court who’s literally a Scalia 2.0, which is an ironic turn of events given the cover-up surrounding the late Justice Scalia’s death.
Leaked Draft of Trump’s Religious Freedom Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize Discrimination
Donald Trump speaks to a gathering of clergy at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, September 21, 2016. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
If signed, the order would create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity.
By Sarah Posner February 1, 2017
A leaked copy of a draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.
The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”
The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/31/statement-press-secretary-sean-spicer ], “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”
Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”
The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.
The exemptions, Lederman said, could themselves violate federal law or license individuals and private parties to violate federal law. “Moreover,” he added, “the exemptions would raise serious First Amendment questions, as well, because they would go far beyond what the Supreme Court has identified as the limits of permissive religious accommodations.” It would be “astonishing,” he said, “if the Office of Legal Counsel certifies the legality of this blunderbuss order.”
The leaked draft maintains that, as a matter of policy, “Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.”
It sets forth an exceptionally expansive definition of “religious exercise” that extends to “any act or refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” “It’s very sweeping,” said Ira Lupu, a professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on the Constitution’s religion clauses and on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). “It raises a big question about whether the Constitution or the RFRA authorizes the president to grant religious freedom in such a broad way.”
In particular, said Lupu, the draft order “privileges” a certain set of beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity—beliefs identified most closely with conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians—over others. That, he said, goes beyond “what RFRA might authorize” and may violate the Establishment Clause.
Lupu added that the language of the draft “might invite federal employees,” for example, at the Social Security Administration or Veterans Administration, “to refuse on religious grounds to process applications or respond to questions from those whose benefits depend on same sex marriages.” If other employees do not “fill the gap,” he said, it could “lead to a situation where marriage equality was being de facto undermined by federal employees, especially in religiously conservative communities,” contrary to Supreme Court rulings.
Jenny Pizer, senior counsel and law and policy director for Lambda Legal, said some of the language in the draft order is similar to language in a law passed last year [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-mississippis-law-on-religious-rights-and-lgbt-got-blocked/489731/ ] in Mississippi, which a federal district court ruled violated both the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. (The case is now on appeal.) Pizer said the draft order would appear to violate the Establishment Clause by listing a “particular set of religious beliefs and giving special government protection to people who hold those beliefs as opposed to different beliefs.”
Section 4 of the order, “Specific Agency Responsibilities,” requires HHS to issue a rule exempting any person or organization with religious objections from complying with the ACA’s preventive-care mandate—42 U.S.C. 300gg-13(a)(4)—which includes contraceptive coverage. It requires HHS to ensure that anyone purchasing insurance on a health-care exchange have the option of purchasing a plan that neither covers abortions nor “subsidize[s] plans that do provide such coverage.”
And it bars HHS from taking any adverse action against federally funded child-welfare organizations, including those offering adoption, foster, or family support services, that deny anyone these services “due to a conflict with the organization’s religious beliefs.”
Pizer said this language constitutes “a license to discriminate with public money in a series of contexts in which people tend to be vulnerable,” such as against LGBT children in foster care, which is federally funded. More broadly, she said, it would permit organizations receiving federal grants or contracts to provide child welfare services not only to refuse necessary care but to refuse even to “refer the child to another agency or setting that would be protective and affirming and instead place the child in an environment that is aggressively hostile to who that child is, on religious grounds.” Even during the George W. Bush administration, she noted, “there were protections in executive orders that beneficiaries of grantees and contractors were not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Section 4 also requires the Department of Justice to establish a new section or working group dedicated to protecting “religious freedom.”
On Tuesday, the White House announced that it would continue President Obama’s executive order protecting federal contractors from anti-LGBT discrimination. Yet the new draft order codifies a laundry list of claims advanced by the Christian right in recent years of indications that the advance of LGBT rights has put the religious freedom of conservative Christians at risk. “They would say this is a nondiscrimination order,” said Lambda Legal’s Pizer. “We disagree. We would say being denied the ability to discriminate against others is not discrimination against you.”
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
Updated on 2/2/2017: A White House official, speaking with ABC News [ http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-executive-order-draft-curtail-lgbt-rights/story?id=45209220 ], did not dispute the authenticity of the draft religious freedom executive order, but officials said it is one of hundreds circulating, some drafted by the transition team, others by the White House, not all of which are likely to become policy. The official did not say who drafted this particular order.
*
Executive Order—Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom
EXECUTIVE ORDER
Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to guide the executive branch in formulating and implementing policies with implications for the religious freedom of persons and organizations in America, and to further compliance with the Constitution, applicable statutes, and other legal authorities, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Policy. The United States Constitution enshrines and protects the fundamental natural right to religious liberty. This Constitutional protection ensures that Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their consciences, and will remain free to express their viewpoints without suffering adverse treatment from the Federal Government. It shall be the policy of this Administration to protect religious freedom.
Sec. 2. Definitions. For purposes of this order:
(a) “Person” shall have the same definition as “person” in 1 U.S.C. 1.
(b) “Religious exercise” includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, and includes any act or any refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.
(c) “Religious organization” shall be construed broadly to encompass any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations, operated for a religious purpose, even if its purpose is not exclusively religious, and is not limited to houses of worship or tax-exempt organizations, or organizations controlled by or associated with a house of worship or a convention or association of churches.
Sec. 3 Religious Freedom Principles and Policymaking Criteria. All executive branch departments and agencies (“agencies”) shall, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, adhere to the following principles and criteria when formulating and implementing regulations, actions, or policies:
(a) Religious freedom is not confined to religious organizations or limited to religious exercise that takes place in houses of worship or the home. It is guaranteed to persons of all faiths and extends to all activities of life.
(b) Persons and organizations do not forfeit their religious freedom when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts: or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.
(c) As required by religious freedom laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq. (“RFRA”) and the religious provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 20003 et seq., agencies shall faithfully discharge their duty to accommodate the religion of federal employees and shall not promulgate regulations, take actions, or enact policies that substantially burden a person’s or religious organization’s religious exercise unless the imposition represents the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest. Regulations, actions, or policies shall not be deemed “compelling” simply by virtue of their having been applied neutrally, broadly, or across the Federal Government.
Sec. 4. Specific agency Responsibilities to Avoid Potential Violation of Religious Freedom
(a) The Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury shall immediately issue an interim final rule that exempts from the preventative-care mandate set forth in 42 U.S.C. 300gg-13(a)(4) all persons and religious organizations that object to complying with the mandate for religious or moral reasons.
(b) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take appropriate actions, through mechanisms to ensure compliance with existing statutory and other protections, if necessary, to ensure that any individuals purchasing health insurance in the individual market (whether through a federally facilitated exchange, a state-sponsored health insurance exchange, or otherwise) has the ability to purchase health insurance that does not provide coverage for abortion and does not subsidize plans that do provide such coverage.
(c) The Secretary of Health and human Services shall take all appropriate actions to ensure that the Federal Government shall not discriminate or take any adverse action against a religious organization that provides federally-funded child-welfare services, including promoting or providing adoption, foster, or family support services for children, or similar services, on the basis that the organization declines to provide , facilitate, or refer such services due to a conflict with the organization’s religious beliefs. The Secretary of Health and human Services shall, where authorized by law, promptly propose for notice and comment new regulations consistent with this policy.
(d) All agencies shall, with respect to any person, house of worship, or religious organization that is a recipient of or offeror for a Federal Government contract, subcontract, grant, purchase order, or cooperative agreement, provide protections and exceptions consistent with sections 702(a) and 703(e) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 20003-I(a) and 2000e-2(e)) and section 103(d) of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12113(d)). The Secretary of Labor shall, where authorized by law, promptly propose for notice and comment new regulations consistent with this policy.
(e) The Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure that the Department of the Treasury shall not impose any tax or tax penalty, delay or deny tax-exempt status, or disallow tax deductions for contributions made under 26 U.S.C. 501(c)(3), or otherwise make unavailable or deny any tax benefits to any person, church, synagogue, house of worship or other religious organization.
(1) on the basis of such person or organization speaking on moral or political issues from a religious perspective where religious speech of similar character has, consistent with law, not ordinarily been treated as an intervention in a political campaign by the Department of the Treasury, or
(2) on the basis that such person or organization believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.
The Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue shall, where authorized by law, promptly propose for notice and comment new regulations consistent with this policy.
(b) No agency shall, to the extent allowed by law, not recognize any decisions or findings made by any federally-recognized accrediting body that revokes or denies accreditation to, or otherwise disadvantages, a religious organization on the basis that such organization believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with a belief described in section 4(e)(2) of this order.
(g) No agency shall exclude or otherwise make unavailable or deny any person or religious organization admission or access to charitable fundraising campaigns on the basis that such person or organization believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the beliefs described in Section 4(e)(2) of this order.
(k) No agency shall take adverse action against any person or religious organization that is a Federal employee, contractor, or grantee on the basis of their speaking or acting in accordance with the beliefs described in section 4(e)(2) of this order while outside the scope of their employment, contract, or grant, and shall reasonably accommodate such speech and action when made within the course of their employment, contract, or grant. This provision shall not be construed to diminish or otherwise limit any other protection provided by this order.
(l) The Attorney General shall establish with the Department of Justice a Section or working group that will ensure that the religious freedom of persons and religious organizations is protected throughout the United States, and shall investigate and, if necessary, take or coordinate appropriate action under applicable religious freedom laws.
Sec. 5. General Provisions.
(a) All agencies shall promptly withdraw or rescind any rulings, directives, regulations, guidance, positions, or interpretations that are inconsistent with this order to the extent of their inconsistency.
(b) The provisions of this order shall prevail in cases of conflict with any existing executive order and with any future executive order unless such future order explicitly refers to, and limited or excludes, the application of this order.
(c) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect (i) the authority granted by law to an agency, or the head thereof, or ii) the functions of the OMB Director relating to budget, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(d) This order shall be carried out subject to the availability of appropriations and to the extent permitted by law.
(e) This order does not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies or instrumentalities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
President Donald Trump's nominee for Education Secretary is now perilously close to defeat in her confirmation battle and Democrats are putting pressure on senators from their own party to oppose every Trump nominee, particularly for the Supreme Court. Duration: 6:04
Rachel Maddow reports on how the negative response by Americans to the actions of the Donald Trump regime has fostered a new solidarity and a new level of local political activism and advocacy. Duration: 12:51
Christine Weick interrupts Texas Muslim Capitol Day speaker
Anti-Trump backlash rapidly outpacing tea party in its prime
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/1/17
Rachel Maddow reports on Democrats and anti-Trump opposition groups organizing more quickly and with greater popular support among Americans than the tea party of 2010. Duration: 11:29
Democrats forcing GOP to deal with confirmation system they broke
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/1/17
David Leonhardt, writer and editor for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about why he thinks Democrats should accept that Republicans broke the confirmation system when they refused to giving Merrick Garland a hearing and should give Neil Gorsuch the same treatment. Duration: 7:59
Senator Booker: What's happening with Trump is worthy of outrage
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/1/17
Senator Cory Booker talks with Rachel Maddow about Democratic opposition to Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, the concerns of his constituents about Trump, and the need to stay focused and resist fatigue in challenging Trump. Duration: 9:42
Merkley: Dems can't be ‘complicit’ in ‘stolen’ SCOTUS seat
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/1/17
Senator Jeff Merkley joins Lawrence to explain why Democrats must not confirm any nominee for the Supreme Court seat that he says Republicans stole from President Obama. Duration: 15:54
Shocking reports of what Trump said on calls to foreign leaders
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/1/17
Two new reports have leaked details about Donald Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders; he reportedly "blasted" the Australian P.M. and threatened to send the U.S. military into Mexico. E.J. Dionne and Ken Vogel join Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss. Duration: 6:31
What does it mean for the White House to put Iran 'on notice'
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 2/1/17
MSNBC's Brian Williams speaks with NBC News's Andrea Mitchell about the White House putting Iran 'on notice,' plus the days other headlines about Trump's rocky phone calls with world leaders. Duration: 7:35
Pres. Trump: Frederick Douglass 'has done an amazing job'
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 2/1/17
The President's remarks about Frederick Douglass at the start of Black History Month created a lot of questions in Washington today. MSNBC's Brian Williams talks to Ali Velshi & Eugene Robinson. Duration: 3:05
On Saturday, a 5-year-old boy whose mother is Iranian was reportedly detained for hours by himself at Washington Dulles International Airport as President Donald Trump’s immigration order was enforced.
Asked on Monday whether Trump’s order — which critics have called a “Muslim ban” — should apply to 5-year-old children, White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a clear answer: yes.
“That’s why we slow [the process] down a little,” Spicer said at the daily press briefing. “To make sure that if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”
President Trump announces the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, a Colorado judge who may be more conservative than his predecessor, the late Antonin Scalia.
Late Night writer Amber Ruffin reads between the lines of President Trump's widely criticized Black History Month speech to explain what he really meant.
In the next four to eight years, American children will be born in a country led by a vainglorious man who wishes to subordinate facts to his ego. PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PETERSON / REDUX
By Jiayang Fan February 2, 2017
If you were a child growing up in China in the late nineteen-eighties, you learned fairly early the universe of things that were less than dependable: hot water, the bus schedule, and, most irritatingly—if you were an introverted second grader—the capricious offerings of the itinerant book cart. But one aspect of our lives, from birth until, it seemed to me, death, remained as constant as the sunrise. This was the voice of the loudspeaker broadcasts in our Army hospital compound (my mother was a military doctor), which woke me every morning before I could witness the dawn, accompanying me through all three meals and, as I brushed my teeth for bed, sometimes long after dusk.
The first time I read “1984,” George Orwell’s classic dystopia, I was an eleventh grader in America, and its portrayal of a world rife with loudspeaker announcements and an omnipotent Party did not strike me as related to the world we had left behind when I was eight years old. Winston Smith, the protagonist of “1984,” is confined in an authoritarian prison, deprived of the most fundamental freedoms and inculcated with Newspeak. In my early childhood, at least as I remembered it, everyone I knew lived ordinary, unmolested lives.
An impassioned teacher, given to rhetorical drama, once tried to convince me otherwise: “Don’t you see? The Chinese government hurt its own people, and you were a helpless victim.” But I’m not hurt, I insisted. “I mean, a victim of that cruel society,” she pleaded, in the manner of a missionary, impatient with the pagan who won’t see the light. The two of us went on like this for some time, both growing increasingly exasperated, neither capable of explaining to the other her version of truth and reality. Other details in our conversation have been lost to time, but I never shook the expression on her face, flushed grapefruit pink and, it seemed to me, quivering on the precipice of tears.
Years later, I recognized the expression on my teacher’s face as one of profound frustration with perceived irrationality. I knew it because, when I tried to begin a conversation with my mother about the inglorious deeds of the Chinese Communist Party (of which she had been a dedicated member for two decades), she recoiled with such violence that I understood instantly that my catalogue of facts was irrelevant. A complete rejection of the Party would amount to a denial of the better part of her adult life. It was not political but personal, and rationality had nothing to do with it.
Rational reasoning and truth have been much on my mind as we enter a world of alternative facts and crypto-fascist edicts from the White House, less than two weeks into Donald Trump’s Administration. Last week, when “1984” rose toward the top of Amazon’s best-seller list, I dug out my dog-eared paperback copy and reread a quotation that I had underlined a decade and a half earlier: “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?”
In recent days, as Trump and his cohorts have peddled blatant falsehoods—that his Inauguration attracted the largest crowd in history, or that he lost the popular vote owing to millions of votes by illegal aliens—I have wondered about the extent to which minds can be controlled, or, rather, commandeered, by the relentless deluge of misinformation.
Like many Chinese immigrants, my mother and I came to America so that my father could pursue graduate studies, not to seek political freedom. When I was old enough to study the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre, periods in Chinese history when the authoritarian government subjected its citizenry to inexpressible brutality, I would wonder about everything I knew, or thought I had known. The one time I asked my mother about why she did not resist, she answered distractedly and somewhat defensively: it was a very confused time. Who could know what was true and what was false? What to believe and whom to trust?
The muddling of fact and fiction is a tried-and-true tactic of totalitarian regimes. What’s more, when the two are confused for long enough, or when an indefatigable war on truth has been waged for a year, or two years, or perhaps eight, it will likely be harder and more tiresome to untangle them and remember a time when a firm line was drawn between the true and the false as a matter of course. If amnesia breeds normalization, fatigue has always served as the authoritarian’s great accomplice.
At the time my mother and I were getting ready to leave for America, neither of us knew the ways in which the contours of the world could be different. For people of my mother’s generation, the Party’s truth had become so embedded in their understanding of themselves that the boundary between what they represented and what the government propagandized had faded, shifting to form the outline of a manufactured reality.
Perhaps this is exactly what Trump and his more ideological aides, Steve Bannon among them, envision. But it’s just as likely that they, too, have become so convinced of their alternative reality that what we recognize to be fiction genuinely constitutes their fact. Orwell again: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” In any case, no matter what Trump thinks of China, something about the increasingly aggressive repression of the media by China’s President, Xi Jinping, may well hold some appeal for him as a model. How liberating would it be, Trump might wonder, to make all legislation a matter of executive orders and sign them at will without Congress, vexing million-strong protests, and a media that readily reports them?
In the next four to eight years, American children will be born in a country led by a vainglorious man who wishes to fit facts—and their future—into the convenient shape of his ego. But democracy, freedom of expression, and, above all, the right to truth are not antiquated pieties. They belong to citizens who can still make their voices heard, before resignation metastasizes into complacency, exhaustion into self-doubt. The struggle will be to maintain openness and tolerance as the norm, the values that our children absorb into their identities naturally—to be defended rather than be defensive about.
On the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated, I received a message from a man who had previously disparaged my work on social media: “Welcome to your destiny.” I imagined him smirking as he typed those words and I wanted to tell him that he got it backward, that I already know what it is like to live in a world with an omnipotent leader and a renovated reality. I have known loudspeakers, their mass persuasions, emotional arousals, and booming, relentless broadcasts. And I know that they are not my destiny, because I won’t let them be.
White House nixed Holocaust statement naming Jews The State Department wrote a message that recognized Jewish victims, but the White House used its own that didn’t. President Donald Trump’s White House reportedly blocked the statement's release. 02/02/2017 Updated 02/02/2017 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/white-house-holocaust-jews-234572 [with comments]
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Trump's Supreme Court Pick Is A Disciple Of Scalia's 'Originalist' Crusade
Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, faces members of the media while meeting with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in his Senate office. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By Lauren Russell and Nina Totenberg February 2, 2017 6:00 AM ET
The late Justice Antonin Scalia may not have been the original originalist [ http://www.npr.org/2016/02/14/466744465/originalism-a-primer-on-scalias-constitutional-philosophy ], but he popularized what once had been a fringe legal doctrine. He argued for it both on and off the U.S. Supreme Court and brought originalism into, if not the mainstream, then at least into the center of legal debate.
The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.
What drove the increasing acceptance of originalism on the Supreme Court was Scalia's uncompromising commitment to his personal judicial philosophy and the growth of the conservative Federalist Society in academia, spawning, in turn, more and more advocates of the theory.
Also significantly contributing was the luck of the Supreme Court draw.
From 1980 on, Republican presidents got the chance to fill seven seats on the Supreme Court, and at each rotation, the new justice was more conservative than the person he or she replaced. That, too, reflected the increasing conservative drift of the Republican Party, with evangelicals and other social conservatives gaining more power and influence.
Scalia and other justices have embraced originalism as a way to check what they viewed as the growing and unbounded power of the judiciary. They contended that if policy changes take place, the changes should come through the democratic process rather than through the unelected courts.
At a 2016 lecture at a law school, Gorsuch said the "great project of Justice Scalia's career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators:"
"To remind us that legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future. But that judges should do none of these things in a democratic society. That judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be— not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best."
There are no transcripts of the framers' conversations while they drafted the Constitution, so no one knows precisely what they were thinking as they wrote it. There are, however, records of the ratification debates, which originalists rely on to determine intent.
"The modern version of originalism is looking for the original public meaning of the Constitution and isn't looking for subjective framers' views, so the views of the ratifiers, in that case, is more important," said Todd Gaziano, senior fellow in constitutional law at the Pacific Legal Foundation.
The living constitutionalists' take on originalism
Gorsuch has stressed, as have other originalists, that the job of a judge should be to "look backward" at what the Founding Fathers meant at the time they wrote and ratified the Constitution. One-time constitutional law professor Barack Obama summarized the critique of that theory this way in his book The Audacity of Hope:
Anyone like Justice Scalia, looking to resolve our modern constitutional dispute through strict construction, has one big problem: The founders themselves disagreed profoundly, vehemently, on the meaning of their masterpiece. Before the ink on the constitutional parchment was dry, arguments had erupted not just about minor provisions, but about first principles; not just between peripheral figures, but within the revolution's very core.
Those critical of originalism argue that a static interpretation of the law lags behind society's progress.
"As I see it, it isn't the Supreme Court that is deciding for the whole society, like an imperial ruler," she said at an event in February 2014. Speaking of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, she said, "there hasn't been any major change in which there wasn't a groundswell among the people before the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the inclusion in the equality concept of people who were once left out.
"It was a huge embarrassment that racism persisted in our country, that our troops in World War II until the very end were separated. I think that World War II made inevitable the change with respect to the status of racial minorities. And it was the same way with women's increasing demand to count as full citizens."
Sparring on the Supreme Court over constitutional interpretation
Some of the most discussed and controversial Supreme Court decisions come down to the justices' disagreements as to whether the Constitution should be viewed as a "dead" or "enduring" document, as Scalia called it, or a "living" one.
Those disagreements were never more apparent than in a series of decisions about gay rights written by the usually conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy [ http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/26/195917213/justice-kennedy-at-center-of-gay-rights-decisions-for-a-decade ], who is often dubbed the swing vote on the Supreme Court because he sometimes votes with the Court's liberals. In a decision striking down a Texas law that criminalized private, consensual "homosexual conduct," Kennedy asserted that the Founding Fathers did not specify all liberties because they expected that list to change.
"They knew times can blind us to certain truths, and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," Kennedy said while summarizing his opinion from the bench.
"It is the promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter," he said.
Scalia dissented, declaring, "It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, and in particular, in that battle of the culture war that concerns whether there should be any moral opprobrium attached to homosexual conduct."
The same-sex marriage cases also divided along similar lines.
"The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right," Kennedy said from the bench in announcing the 2015 same-sex marriage opinion.
In his dissent, Scalia included a scathing footnote on Kennedy's opinion.
If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity," I would hide my head in a bag.
"But allowing unelected judges to strike down democratically enacted laws based on rights that are not actually written in the Constitution raises obvious concerns about the judicial role," he said. Leave it to the democratic process, said Roberts.
Gorsuch and Such Some viewers were skeptical about a purported Columbia University yearbook entry for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but the image is genuine. Claim: Neil Gorsuch quoted Henry Kissinger in his Columbial University yearbook entry. TRUE Feb 01, 2017 http://www.snopes.com/neil-gorsuch-yearbook/
Evan McMullin Is Trying to Save Democracy As Trump unleashes his id on the American people, Evan McMullin seeks to encourage civic engagement; point out the early signs of authoritarianism; and demonstrate that it is still O.K. to criticize our leaders. The former C.I.A. operative and failed Presidential candidate has become an unlikely civic superego for the age of Trump. February 2, 2017 http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/evan-mcmullins-quest-to-save-democracy
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President Trump complete remarks at National Prayer Breakfast (C-SPAN)
Donald Trump gave a doozy of a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast
February 2, 2017
Donald Trump spoke at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday. It was, um, unorthodox.
TRUMP: Thank you, Mark. So nice.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much, thank you. (APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much, it's a great honor to be here this morning. And so many faith leaders -- very, very important people to me -- from across our magnificent nation, and so many leaders from all across the globe. Today we continue a tradition begun by President Eisenhower some 64 years ago.
This gathering is a testament to the power of faith and is one of the great customs of our nation. And I hope to be here seven more times with you.
(APPLAUSE)
I want very much to thank our co-chair Senator Boozman and Senator Coons. And all of the congressional leadership; they're all over the place. We have a lot of very distinguished guests. And we have one guest who was just sworn in last night, Rex Tillerson, secretary of state.
(APPLAUSE)
Gonna do a great job.
(APPLAUSE)
Some people didn't like Rex because he actually got along with leaders of the world. I said, no, you have to understand that's a good thing. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. He's respected all over the world and I think he's going to go down as one of our great, great secretaries.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you, Rex.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you as well to Senate Chaplain Barry Black, for his moving words. And I don't know Chaplain whether or not that's an appointed position -- is that an appointed position? I don't even know if you're Democrat or if you're Republican, but I'm appointing you for another year, the hell with it.
(LAUGHTER)
And I think it's not even my appointment, it's the Senate's appointment, but we'll talk to them. You're very -- you're -- your son is here. Your job is very, very secure. OK?
(LAUGHTER)
Thank you, Barry. Appreciate it very much.
I also want to thank my great friends the Roma. Where's Roma, beautiful Roma Downey, the voice of an angel. She's got the voice -- every time I hear that voice; it's so beautiful. That -- everything is so beautiful about Roma, including her husband because he's a special, special friend. Mark Burnett for the wonderful introduction.
So true, so true. I said to the agent, I'm sorry, the only thing wrong -- I actually got on the phone and fired him myself because he said, you don't want to do it, it'll never work, it'll never, ever work, you don't want to do it. I said, listen. When I really fired him after it became the number one show, it became so successful and he wanted a commission and he didn't want to this.
That's when I really said -- but we had tremendous success on The Apprentice. And when I ran for president, I had to leave the show. That's when I knew for sure that I was doing it. And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out.
The ratings went down the tubes. It's been a total disaster and Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?
(LAUGHTER)
But we've had an amazing life together the last 14, 15 years. And a -- an outstanding man and thank you very much for introducing. Appreciate it. It's a great honor.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I also want to thank my dear friend, Vice President Mike Pence, who has been incredible.
(APPLAUSE)
And incredible wife, Karen.
And every time I was in a little trouble with something where they were questioning me, they'd say, "But he picked Mike Pence."
(LAUGHTER)
"So he has to know what he's doing."
(LAUGHTER)
And it's true, he's been -- you know on the scale of zero to 10, I rate him a 12, OK?
So I wanna thank you, thank you very much, appreciate it.
(APPLAUSE)
But most importantly, today I wanna thank the American people. Your faith and prayers have sustained me and inspired me through some very, very tough times. All around America, I have met amazing people whose words of worship and encouragement have been a constant source of strength.
What I hear most often as I travel the country are five words that never, ever fail to touch my heart, that's "I am praying for you." I hear it so often, I am praying for you, Mr. President.
(APPLAUSE)
No one has inspired me more in my travels than the families of the United States military. Men and women who have put their lives on the line everyday for their country and their countrymen. I just came back yesterday, from Dover Air Force Base, to join the family of Chief William "Ryan" Owens as America's fallen hero was returned home.
Very, very sad, but very, very beautiful, very, very beautiful. His family was there, incredible family, loved him so much, so devastated, he was so devastated, but the ceremony was amazing. He died in defense of our nation. He gave his life in defense of our people. Our debt to him and our debt to his family is eternal and everlasting. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
We will never forget the men and women who wear the uniform, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
From generation to generation, their vigilance has kept our liberty alive. Our freedom is won by their sacrifice and our security has been earned with their sweat and blood and tears. God has blessed this land to give us such incredible heroes and patriots. They are very, very special and we are going to take care of them.
(APPLAUSE)
Our soldiers understand that what matters is not party or ideology or creed, but the bonds of loyalty that link us all together as one. America is a nation of believers. In towns all across our land, it's plain to see what we easily forget -- so easily we forget this, that the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success.
I will tell you that and I tell you that from somebody that has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success. Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people.
And I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith; they don't have money, at least, not nearly to the extent. And they're happy. Those, to me, are the successful people, I have to tell you.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I was blessed to be raised in a churched home. My mother and father taught me that to whom much is given, much is expected. I was sworn in on the very Bible from which my mother would teach us as young children, and that faith lives on in my heart every single day.
The people in this room come from many, many backgrounds. You represent so many religions and so many views. But we are all united by our faith, in our creator and our firm knowledge that we are all equal in His eyes. We are not just flesh and bone and blood, we are human beings with souls. Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God.
(APPLAUSE)
It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, the God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember.
(APPLAUSE)
Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is also a right under threat all around us, and the world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways. And I've never seen it so much and so openly as since I took the position of president.
The world is in trouble, but we're going to straighten it out. OK? That's what I do. I fix things. We're going to straighten it out.
(APPLAUSE)
Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. They're tough. We have to tough. It's time we're going to be a little tough folks. We're taking advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore. We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion. Acts of wantonness (ph) (inaudible) just minorities. Horrors on a scale that defy description.
Terrorism is a fundamental threat to religious freedom. It must be stopped and it will be stopped. It may not be pretty for a little while. It will be stopped. We have seen...
(APPLAUSE)
And by the way, General, as you know James "Mad Dog", shouldn't say it in this room, Mattis, now there's a reason they call him "Mad Dog" Mattis, never lost a battle, always wins them, and always wins them fast. He's our new secretary of Defense, will be working with Rex. He's right now in South Korea, going to Japan, going to some other spots. I'll tell you what, I've gotten to know him really well. He's the real deal. We have somebody who's the real deal working for us and that's what we need. So, you watch. You just watch.
(APPLAUSE)
Things will be different. We have seen peace loving Muslims brutalize, victimize, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers. We have seen threats of extermination against the Jewish people. We have seen a campaign of ISIS and genocide against Christians, where they cut of heads. Not since the Middle Ages have we seen that. We haven't seen that, the cutting off of heads. Now they cut off the heads, they drown people in steel cages. Haven't seen this. I haven't seen this. Nobody's seen this for many, many years.
TRUMP: All nations have a moral obligation to speak out against such violence. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it and to confront it viciously if we have to.
So I want to express clearly today, to the American people, that my administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in our land. America must forever remain a tolerant society where all face are respected and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure.
We have to feel safe and secure. In recent days, we have begun to take necessary action to achieve that goal. Our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world. But these are those and there are those that would exploit that generosity to undermine the values that we hold so dear. We need security.
There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle, not right. We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation. You look all over the world and you see what's happening.
So in the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty. And that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination. We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values.
We will be a safe country, we will be a free country and we will be a country where all citizens can practice their beliefs without fear of hostility or a fear of violence. America will flourish, as long as our liberty, and in particular, our religious liberty is allowed to flourish.
(APPLAUSE)
America will succeed, as long as our most vulnerable citizens -- and we have some that are so vulnerable -- have a path to success. And America will thrive, as long as we continue to have faith in each other and faith in God.
(APPLAUSE)
That faith in God has inspired men and women to sacrifice for the needy, to deploy to wars overseas and to lock arms at home, to ensure equal rights for every man, woman and child in our land. It's that faith that sent the pilgrims across the oceans, the pioneers across the plains and the young people all across America, to chase their dreams. They are chasing their dreams. We are going to bring those dreams back.
As long as we have God, we are never, ever alone. Whether it's the soldier on the night watch, or the single parent on the night shift, God will always give us solace and strength, and comfort. We need to carry on and to keep carrying on.
For us here in Washington, we must never, ever stop asking God for the wisdom to serve the public, according to his will. That's why...
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
That's why President Eisenhower and Senator Carlson had the wisdom to gather together 64 years ago, to begin this truly great tradition. But that's not all they did together. Lemme tell you the rest of the story.
Just one year later, Senator Carlson was among the members of Congress to send to the president's desk a joint resolution that added, "Under God," to our Pledge of Allegiance. It's a great thing.
(APPLAUSE)
Because that's what we are and that is what we will always be and that is what our people want; one beautiful nation, under God.
Thank you, God bless you and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Donald Trump Declares a Vision of Religious Nationalism
Donald Trump attends the National Prayer Breakfast.
At the annual prayer breakfast in Washington, the president focused on the violent, ideological threats to America.
Emma Green Feb 1, 2017
When Donald Trump looks out on the world, he sees a landscape of potential threats to the United States and its values. “Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but also a right under threat all around us,” the president said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. “The world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways,” he went on, “but we’re going to straighten it out. That’s what I do. I fix things.”
He laid out a vision of what it means to end these threats to United States: Stop terrorism. End the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians. Defend the country’s borders from those who “would exploit that generosity to undermine the values we hold so dear.” Religious Americans also feel threatened within the U.S., he said: “That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment,” a provision of the tax code that prohibits [ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/how-trump-is-trying-to-put-more-money-in-politics/493823/ ] religious leaders and institutions endorsing or opposing political candidates, “and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.” Repealing the Johnson Amendment would theoretically allow houses of worship and religious leaders to openly advocate for political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status, while also allowing them to funnel religious donations [id.] into explicitly political efforts.
During his speech, Trump argued that America’s religiously grounded values are being attacked—not just through acts of violence, but through ideological erosion. “We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation,” Trump said on Thursday, seeming to refer to the “radical Islamic extremism” he has emphasized [ https://www.theatlantic.com/liveblogs/2017/01/live-coverage-of-the-presidential-inauguration/513785/13973/ ] in past speeches. “You look all over the world and see what’s happening.” He will defend these values, he said, because “that’s what people want: one beautiful nation under God.”
America was not always “one nation under God”—at least, not officially. The words “under God” weren’t added to the pledge of allegiance until 1954, during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower—not coincidentally, the first president to convene the National Prayer Breakfast. Over time, this relatively new tradition has become a mandatory exercise for commanders in chief; and during the breakfast this year, Trump specifically praised Eisenhower for kicking it off.
In many ways, Trump’s vision of religious nationalism is a continuation of Republican presidents before him. In an interview [ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trump-christian-libertarianism/494843/ ] in August, the Princeton University professor Kevin Kruse pointed out that Trump’s religious rhetoric more closely resembles Nixon’s than Eisenhower’s: “He used it to justify the extent of the Vietnam War and Cambodia; he used it to advance all sorts of Silent Majority proposals before Congress,” Kruse told me. “That’s what you see in Trump today: It’s much more of a defensive pushback against people who are seen as outside one nation under God.”
This echoes recent findings [ http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/02/01/faith-few-strong-links-to-national-identity/ ] of the Pew Research Center on Americans’ sense of their own national identity. While only a third of Americans believe being Christian is a very important part of being American, the numbers are split neatly along party and denominational lines: 43 percent of Republicans were likely to say that’s the case, compared to 29 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants said the same. Trump’s message seems to be directed toward these groups: He is affirming their sense of the tie between national and religious identity, and pushing back against those who would diminish either of those identities.
And he’s doing this through fear. In his comments at the prayer breakfast, Trump gave a graphic description of Christians being murdered overseas: “They cut off the heads, they drown people in steel cages,” he said. He also spoke “peace-loving Muslims brutalized, victimized, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers,” and the threats against the Jewish people. He was inclusive in his description of those who are under threat, for the sake of emphasizing the need for fear: “We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion,” he said, “acts of wanton abuse of minorities, horrors on a scale that defy description.” The fundamental threat to religious freedom, he said, is terrorism.
While Trump has often spoken about the need for safety and security, his comments at the prayer-breakfast offer a look at the ideological framework beneath that call. Like his Republican predecessors, he has aligned himself with a vision of America that is strong and powerful because of its piety. Against the threat of foreigners, terrorists, and corrupting ideologies, the United States will be one, beautiful nation—and in Trump’s view, that’s only possible under God.
Donald Trump threatens to "straighten out" the world in chilling speech to religious leaders The President said we shouldn't worry about "tough phone calls" he's had with world leaders, like the one where he reportedly threatened to send troops into Mexico 2 FEB 2017 Updated 2 FEB 2017 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/donald-trump-threatens-straighten-out-9745335 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Arnold Schwarzenegger Responds to Trump | ABC News
Full Show - Berkeley Riot Aftermath: 1st Amendment Under Attack - 02/02/2017
Published on Feb 2, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Thursday, Feb. 2nd 2017 broadcast of the ["the most classic form of total projection the world has ever seen"] Alex Jones Show [with Anthony Cumia guest-hosting the fourth hour], protests erupt at UC Berkeley as social justice warriors combine their special snowflake powers to shut down the evil Milo Yiannopoulos. Meanwhile President Trump addresses Iran's missile testing, continues to work on the border wall, and negotiates with Australian leaders. On today's show, we speak with Irish journalist and documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer about his latest film, "Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer," covering an abortionist who was convicted of killing four people, including three babies.
Conway cites "Bowling Green Massacre" to defend refugee ban [original title: "Matthews pushes Conway on use of Executive Power"]
Hardball with Chris Matthews 2/2/17
Chris Matthews pushes Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, on whether President Trump can insist that federal workers agree with his policies and further discuss the executive order on immigration. [following sentence added February 3, 2017:] This morning [February 3, 2017], Conway tweeted a clarification saying she meant to say “Bowling Green terrorists.” Duration: 5:42
US nonprofits reject funds to fight extremism due to Trump In this image from video, taken Feb. 1, 2017, Suehaila Amen, a board member of the Dearborn, Mich.-based nonprofit Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Dearborn, Mich. LAHC was awarded federal grant money to combat violent extremism, but is rejecting the money. Feb. 2, 2017 http://bigstory.ap.org/article/29ad5c88c132422f91600d2e818b62f5/us-nonprofits-reject-funds-fight-extremism-due-trump
Trump Is Running the Government Like a Cheap Reality TV Show
Published on Feb 2, 2017 by GQ
In the latest episode of Trumped, the President treats the nomination of the next Supreme Court justice like a low-rent version of The Bachelor’s rose ceremony.
The new president has harsh words and threats for allies Australia and Mexico - but is curiously silent on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Duration: 14:43
The Trump administration's characterization of Sunday's SEAL team raid in Yemen is evolving as more questions have been raised about the operation and contradictions are arising. Duration: 8:34
Exposed: Who Really Instigated The Berkley Protests
Published on Feb 3, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
If you have never heard of Robert Reich, it is time to make him famous, not for a good reason. This mentally deranged liberal professor is promoting protests that have turned violent every time.
Hollywood Calls For The Overthrow Of President Trump
Published on Feb 3, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Despite Trump protests getting more violent, liberal hollywood is still promoting the anti-Trump protests, instigating the destruction of our great nation.
New Trump era emboldens Putin, a perilous time for Putin critics
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/2/17
Rachel Maddow reports on how the Donald Trump era has emboldened Vladimir Putin, and reminds viewers of the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and the poisoning of Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza. Duration: 20:38
Persecution of Putin opposition a test for Tillerson
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/2/17
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, talks with Rachel Maddow about dangers political opponents of Vladimir Putin face, and the increased anxiety with Putin admirer Donald Trump in the White House and Putin friend Rex Tillerson installed as Secretary of State. Duration: 6:02
David Sanger, national security correspondent for the New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about the planning and unanticipated obstacles that befell Donald Trump's first ordered counter-terrorism raid in Yemen. Duration: 11:14
Donald Trump's mishaps in the White House are being made public thanks to an unprecedented level of leaks – some by aides trying to influence him, others to sound the alarm. Lawrence discusses with John Heilemann and Eli Stokols. Duration: 12:40
Rewrite: Why Donald Trump is wrong about Harley-Davidson
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/2/17
Trump was forced to meet Harley-Davidson executives at the White House after fear of protests led to the cancellation of an event at a Wisconsin factory. In the Rewrite, Lawrence corrects what Trump said about Harley-Davidson – with the help of some old photos. Duration: 6:19
Trump White House could be hours away from new Iran sanctions
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 2/2/17
MSNBC's Brian Williams covers the days fast-moving details in the world of U.S. foreign policy with Kasie Hunt, Michael Crowley, Megan Murphy, and Hugh Hewitt. Duration: 10:02
President Trump Tangles with Foreign Leaders: The Daily Show
Published on Feb 3, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Straining relationships with key U.S. allies, President Trump threatens to invade Mexico and hangs up on the prime minister of Australia after a heated phone call.
What does it mean to construct an alt-right national security reality? As to Bannon, I offered this example:
Among other things, [Breitbart] systematically dismisses any attempt to recognize right-wing terrorism and extremism as a real problem in this country. It has long derided “this so-called terror threat” as a nonsense invention of the Department of Homeland Security. And it has equated President Obama’s efforts to address right-wing extremism to a “refusal to acknowledge radical Islam as a threat [ http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/21/breitbarts-dr-sebastian-gorka-obama-focus-on-right-wing-extremism-endangers-american-lives/ ]” and a political ploy that puts American lives in danger.
The idea that the mastermind behind this project will now serve as our commander-in-chief’s right-hand strategist creates a genuine security predicament. Going forward, such an appointment should be expected to fundamentally undermine the public’s trust in the new administration’s will and ability to even-handedly deal with homegrown terrorist threats on a factual, and not religious or ideological, basis.
That future is now. Last night, Reuters broke [ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO ] the story that the administration is allegedly looking to overhaul and rename the "Countering Violent Extremism" (CVE) program to focus exclusively on Islamist extremism. If these changes are made, according to sources briefed on the changes, CVE would no longer target right-wing groups such as white supremacists that have carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.
We are talking about the possibility of a newly revised America, where the only real terrorist is an Islamic terrorist. Whatever your thoughts on the efficacy of particular CVE efforts, that the Trump administration is contemplating such a change is, frankly, terrifying. (If you seek a glimpse of the possible consequences of denying or downplaying the severity of right-wing extremism as a matter of executive policy, check out the big piece [ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/ ] The Intercept just published yesterday detailing the FBI’s longtime battle against white supremacists’ infiltration of law enforcement agencies.) It suggests we have already completed the jump from Kellyanne Conway’s amusing world of “alternative facts [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/22/how-kellyanne-conway-ushered-in-the-era-of-alternative-facts/ ]” to a security edifice that incorporates “alternative threats”—by which I mean threats defined in blatant disregard of the empirical reality.
After this last week, we can’t really claim to be surprised by the CVE news. After all, alternative threat construction is the only way to explain the contents of Trump’s immigration executive order [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states ], which imposed a sloppy, sweeping 90-day ban on the entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, 120-day ban on all refugees, and indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. And the very next day, Trump sent the clearest possible signal that this is the new normal—that he sees no problem with conflating ideology and actuality, the political and the factual—when he signed a presidential memorandum [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and ] granting Bannon a permanent seat on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council (NSC) (and bumping the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from theirs).
All this brings me to my conclusion: these are strategic choices that indicate systematic alt-right world-building from deep inside the White House. I do not say this lightly. I say this based on facts.
Let’s track back to that immigration order Trump dropped last Friday. The consensus view of the U.S. national security community is that this order is not just a failure of morality, diplomacy, practicability, and probably legality; it also has no chance of accomplishing its stated objective of making America safer. The order rewrites reality not only in the sense that it does things to thousands of aliens from Muslim-majority countries. It also—baselessly—redefines them as a collective national security threat that must be subjected to “extreme vetting” or else near-total exclusion as a matter of public safety.
Others have already taken the administration to task for its supreme disinterest in ascertaining the truth value of the propositions underlying the order. Over the weekend, in a piece [ https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas ] criticizing the immigration order for both its malevolence and sheer drafting [ https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas ] incompetence, Ben pointed to specific provisions of the order that belie the administration’s stated purpose of securing our national security. I agree with Ben’s analysis and would take it even further. It’s not just that the substance of the order is so “utterly orthogonal to any relevant security interest” as to suggest “a deliberate decision to burden human lives to make a public point.” I would add that the detailed rundown Ben provides of the deliberateness with which the administration bypassed the normal executive vetting procedures is itself particularly important evidence of the administration’s “malevolence.” The subversion of process not just utter perversion of substance—is what signals intentional disregard for both the harm that this order would cause and for the objective the order was supposed to fulfill (you know, increasing our security).
In some sense, the press is playing “useful idiot” to the Trump administration on those occasions when it downplays the significance of the administration’s repudiation of anything approaching normal decision-making protocol. Consider this bizarre snippet of weekend analysis [ http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-ban/index.html ] from CNN:
Trump's unilateral moves, which have drawn the ire of human rights groups and prompted protests at US airports, reflect the President's desire to quickly make good on his campaign promises. But they also encapsulate the pitfalls of an administration largely operated by officials with scant federal experience.
If this description strikes you as unobjectionable in its face, look closer: actually, it reduces the mess that the administration has made of countless lives to some kind of collision of honest intentions and administrative naïveté. This framing gives the order’s supporters a nonsense defense to rally around however obvious the ensuing fallout and underestimates the strategic course charted by the fringe elements inside the White House. It is one thing to say the order itself is incompetent—it absolutely is—but to suggest Trump’s team simply didn’t know any better is almost surely false.
As Ben emphasized, and notwithstanding the administration’s vague denials, the order was reportedly not submitted for normal review by the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the State Department or the Department of Defense (Secretary of Defense James Mattis [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/politics/donald-trump-rush-immigration-order-chaos.html ], a vocal opponent of Trump’s Muslim ban during the campaign was not asked for input), and NSC lawyers were barred from even assessing it. These protocols are in place specifically to ensure that executive policies satisfy legal requirements, account for practical complications, and avoid unintended consequences. You sidestep this process if your goal is to get a directive or order to press irrespective of those parameters—in other words, if you decide your policy or political goals simply trumps them.
Process is crucial to factual accuracy, ideological neutrality and operational efficacy—and that’s precisely why Trump’s presidential memorandum inserting Bannon, a political adviser, into the NSC Principals Committee is disturbing to so many (the technical phrase, courtesy of former national security adviser Susan Rice, is “stone cold crazy [ http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/316764-susan-rice-trumps-nsc-order-stone-cold-crazy ]”). The change strikes fear in us because it is a formalization, at the NSC level, of what we just witnessed with the drafting and issuing of the immigration order: the wrong people calling the shots and the wrong people being left out. And let’s dispense with the shoptalk in favor of real candor: we are not this upset simply because the national security adviser is sitting in that seat—as unusual and inadvisable as it may be, past presidents have in the past used all sorts of configurations to customize their use of the NSC and Principals Committee. What truly has us jumping up and down is that the man sitting in that seat is Stephen Bannon.
This is not an overreaction. We are living in an age when Reddit has taken it upon itself to ban an alt-right group from its megaforum [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/01/reddit-bans-alt-right-group.html ], but the White House is allegedly being run by the man responsible for building the biggest alt-right platform in the world.
I woke up Sunday to David Rothkopf’s warning [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-danger-of-steve-bannon-on-the-national-security-council/2017/01/29/ba3982a2-e663-11e6-bf6f-301b6b443624_story.html ] in the Washington Post that Bannon’s addition to the NSC could pose, in the long term, more dangerous consequences for our national security than Trump’s immigration order. But given the president’s broad discretion when it comes to NSC meetings, and more importantly, given that Bannon’s fingerprints are all over the immigration order—both what’s in it and how it was issued—we should focus not on which edict is worse but on the total continuity between them. Both evince the administration’s anti-professional approach to security decisions of the utmost magnitude. And many in the national security community are rightly frightened.
I believe deepening that fright is the apparent gap between how so much of the national security community feels and how our lawmakers are behaving. Almost nothing Trump had done is at odds with the person and president he promised to be on the campaign trail. This is true, too, of his top advisers. And yet from the outset, denial has been the favored approach of several prominent legislators. In November, when civil rights groups and commentators on both sides of the aisle sounded the alarm about Bannon’s appointment, Rand Paul and others insisted on “giv[ing] the guy a chance.” We don’t have reason to think he is personally racist, their argument went [ http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/306139-rand-paul-defends-bannon-give-him-a-chance ], notwithstanding the concededly horrific material he had built his professional career disseminating and his numerous personal statements endorsing ideology [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/31/bannon-odds-islam-china-decades-us-foreign-policy-doctrine/97292068/ ] repugnant to American values. This line of argument is most disingenuous because it ignores the very talent for which Bannon was explicitly recruited by the Trump campaign: he is a strategy professional with an astonishingly successful track record in reality distortion. As I emphasized [ https://www.lawfareblog.com/deep-risk-under-trump-bannon-and-flynn-are-national-security-problem ] in November: “Bannon’s website, Breitbart, is not a vacuous hate site, as is so often suggested. Breitbart is a carefully honed platform, and its clear and consistent approach to communicating the alt-right messaging on national security issues [ http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/ ] should give policy experts and principled politicians pause.”
This thing goes deep and wide. The project now underway in the highest office in the land—the sowing of prejudice as fact in what, at least so far, amounts to methodical alt-right revisionism—already extends well beyond immigration policy and counterrorism. Trump’s fondness for Putin dominated news cycles before the inauguration, and rabid anti-Islam policy has been the administration’s focus since, but we should take careful stock of all the other reality revisions emerging in the overlap between the alt-right and White House agendas.
The bottom line is that in less than two weeks, the Trump administration has ripped any semblance of facade off the palazzo and has asserted its commitment to building a new national security order—one centered not on empirical reality but on an alternative threat reality.
This may not be 1925 Italy, but anyone who thought Bannon and Flynn would stand quietly in the wings, whispering in the president’s ear—that they would be a nefarious, largely unseeable fringe force—has been proven wrong. Bannon, in particular, is pursuing his revisionist project with high-level visibility and underappreciated deliberation. At minimum, principled politicians should refuse to confirm Trump’s remaining cabinet picks until Bannon is removed—not from the NSC Principals Committee [ http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316886-sanders-bannon-must-be-removed-from-national-security-council ] but from the White House altogether.
The stakes really are that high. They are reality itself.
Shawn Donnan and Demetri Sevastopulo 2 Hours Ago Financial Times
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President Donald Trump discusses the federal budget in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on February 22, 2017 in Washington, DC.
A civil war has broken out within the White House over trade, leading to what one official called "a fiery meeting" in the Oval Office pitting economic nationalists close to Donald Trump .. http://www.cnbc.com/donald-trump/ .. against pro-trade moderates from Wall Street.
According to more than half a dozen people inside the White House or dealing with it, the bitter fight has set a hardline group including senior adviser Steve Bannon .. http://www.cnbc.com/stephen-bannon/ .. and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarroagainst a faction led by Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who leads Mr Trump's National Economic Council.
The officials and people dealing with the White House said Mr Navarro appeared to be losing influence in recent weeks. But during the recent Oval Office fight, Mr Trump appeared to side with the economic nationalists, one official said.
The battle over trade is emblematic of a broader fight on economic policy within the Trump administration. It comes ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Ms Merkel .. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/12/merkel-meets-trump-in-clash-of-style-and-substance.html , the German chancellor, and amid preparations for a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Germany next week at which allies' concerns over protectionism are likely to be high on the agenda.
The White House declined to answer specific questions about the internecine dispute. In a statement, a spokeswoman said: "Gary Cohn and Peter Navarro are both valued members of the president's economic team. They are working together to enact the president's economic agenda, protect American workers and grow American businesses."
According to people familiar with White House discussions, Mr Cohn and others have seized on Mr Navarro's public comments — and widespread criticism by economists of his stand on trade deficits and other matters — to try and sideline him.
That has led to discussions over moving Mr Navarro and the new National Trade Council he leads out of the White House and to the Commerce Department, headed by another Wall Street veteran, Wilbur Ross .. http://www.cnbc.com/wilbur-ross/ .
Mr Cohn has also been featuring more prominently in discussions over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of Mr Trump's top trade priorities.
After a meeting with Mr Cohn and other White House officials on Thursday, Mexico's foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, said the goal was to wrap up talks quickly and by the end of this year. That contradicted Mr Ross, who has called for deeper and potentially longer talks that could drag well into next year.
Mr Navarro's case has not been helped by his interactions with Republicans in Congress. He was criticised for being ill-prepared and vague at a closed-door briefing he held with Senators last month to discuss Mr Trump's trade agenda and angered some Republicans as a result.
People familiar with the White House battle over trade said that Mr Navarro, who did not respond to a request for comment, was cutting an increasingly isolated figure in the administration.
He has been operating with a very small staff out of an office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, while Mr Cohn has been adding staff to his NEC base inside the president's residence itself.
Among Mr Cohn's recent appointments has been Andrew Quinn, a respected former diplomat and trade official who served as a senior negotiator during the Obama administration's push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries.
Mr Trump has pulled the US out of the TPP but the White House last month announced Mr Quinn would serve on the NEC as a "special assistant to the president" for international trade.
[LOLOLOL] The appointment of Mr Quinn drew a howl of protest from Breitbart, the rightwing web site Mr Bannon used to lead. It labelled the career official an "enemy within" the Trump administration earlier this month.
"[Mr] Quinn's support for not just the TPP but for multilateralism, in general, is diametrically opposed to the?.?.?.?approach [on trade] that helped Donald Trump get elected," Breitbart wrote.
But his appointment and Mr Navarro's apparent sidelining have helped ease some foreign officials' concerns about the prospects of the Trump administration acting on campaign threats to raise tariffs and take other aggressive steps that could lead to a trade war.
[Ahhhh, the real, sorry the campaign Donald Trump is continuing to stand aside.]
Officials from some countries seeking meetings with Mr Navarro have been steered to Mr Cohn's staff instead. Others have begun speaking directly to Mr Cohn or other senior officials like Jared Kushner, Mr Trump's son-in-law, on issues such as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"The situation is less worrying than it was two months ago because [Mr] Navarro seems to be more and more marginalised," said one European official. "His influence seems to be diminishing quickly."
Thea Lee, a top trade official at the AFL-CIO, the US's largest union, and a member of the president's recently-appointed manufacturing council, said that Mr Trump appeared to be bending to the growing influence of the administration's Wall Street veterans and walking away from his campaign promise for a fresh approach to trade.
"At the moment it appears that the Wall Street wing of the Trump administration is winning this battle and the Wall Street wing is in favour of the status quo in terms of US trade policy," Ms Lee said.
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February 1, 2017 12:49 pm February 1, 2017 12:49 pm
Credit IMF
Peter Navarro, the closest thing Trump has to an economic guru, made some waves .. https://www.ft.com/content/57f104d2-e742-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539 .. by accusing Germany of being a currency manipulator and suggesting that both the shadow Deutsche mark and the euro are undervalued. Leaving aside the dubious notion that this is a good target of US economic diplomacy, is he right?
Yes and no. Unfortunately, the “no” part is what’s relevant to the US.
Yes, Germany in effect has an undervalued currency relative to what it would have without the euro. The figure shows German prices (GDP deflator) relative to Spain (which I take to represent Southern Europe in general) since the euro was created. There was a large real depreciation during the euro’s good years, when Spain had massive capital inflows and an inflationary boom. This has only been partly reversed, despite an incredible depression in Spain. Why? Because wages are downward sticky, and Germany has refused to support the kind of monetary and fiscal stimulus that would raise overall euro area inflation, which remains stuck at far too low a level.
So the euro system has kept Germany undervalued, on a sustained basis, against its neighbors.
But does this mean that the euro as a whole is undervalued against the dollar? Probably not. The euro is weak because investors see poor investment opportunities in Europe, to an important extent because of bad demography, and better opportunities in the U.S.. The travails of the euro system may add to poor European perceptions. But there’s no clear relationship between the problems of Germany’s role within the euro and questions of the relationship between the euro and other currencies.
And may I say, what is the purpose of having someone connected to the U.S. government say this? Are we going to pressure the ECB to adopt tighter monetary policy? I sure hope not. Are we egging on a breakup of the euro? It sure sounds like it — but that is not, not, something the US government should be doing. What would we say if Chinese officials seemed to be talking up a US financial crisis? (It would, of course, be OK with Trump if the Russians did it.)
“Another kick in the teeth”: a top economist on how trade with China helped elect Trump
David Autor’s groundbreaking work on the neglected costs of trade is revealing.
Updated by Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleemzeeshan.aleem@vox.com Mar 29, 2017, 8:50am EDT
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David Autor believes both these things to be true: one, that Donald Trump’s diagnosis of trade with China as the source of woe for countless American workers was both accurate and a crucial part of his appeal on his march to the White House. And two, that Trump’s plan to help those workers by cracking down on trade is likely to backfire.
Autor, a leading empirical economist at MIT, has made something of a habit of looking at big sets of data and drawing conclusions that defy the commonly held wisdom of mainstream economic theory. His work is one of the best guides to the economic forces Trump tapped to win the election last year.
Along with economists David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, Autor has published some groundbreaking work over the past few years on how China’s evolution into a manufacturing colossus has created seismic shocks in towns scattered across the American heartland. What they’ve learned is that competition from China, which accelerated dramatically after it plugged into the global economy by joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, has had unexpectedly long-lasting effects on US labor markets.
At least a million people have not only lost their jobs but have struggled a great deal to find new ones to replace them. That period of limbo has in turn radicalized communities politically, caused a plunge in the marriage rate, and increased the share of children born into poverty. Autor suspects that the long-neglected effects of China’s rise on American workers likely helped tip the election to Trump.
Autor and his collaborators’ works have been hailed as some of the most important work .. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/01/autor-dorn-and-hanson-on-what-we-know-about-china.html .. on trade in decades. In modern economics, open trade has generally been regarded as a win-win for the countries involved, and the costs in terms of job displacements have been assumed to be modest and short-lived. Autor’s findings, which surprised even him, have shown that’s not always the case.
I spoke with Autor over the phone about his work on “the China shock” and what Trump gets right and wrong about trade. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
[...]
Zeeshan Aleem
What do you think about Trump’s trade vision, which blends closing ourselves off from the world to some degree with scaling down trade commitments?
David Autor
It's extremely naive and uninformed. I don't think it has any basis in economic reasoning about the costs and benefits of trade. I think he is a pure mercantilist — he simply thinks exports are good, imports are bad.
I think the idea of slapping large tariffs, or border taxes, on imports is a very destructive idea on all kinds of fronts. I think tearing up the Trans-Pacific Partnership was an incredibly shortsighted decision; the country that most benefited from us tearing up the TPP was China. They were not a signatory of the TPP, and they didn’t want it enacted because it was meant to basically prevent them from setting the rules of the game in Asia. Now that's exactly what they will do.
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, knows to tell President Trump that he’s always right. Credit Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
When Donald Trump came to office, many feared that he would break up our close economic relations with Mexico and/or start a trade war with China. So far, neither has happened.
It’s true that our free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is still under threat, and Trump has placed tariffs on some Chinese goods. But his trade ire seems increasingly focused on an unexpected target: the European Union, which he tweeted has “horrific barriers & tariffs .. http://thehill.com/policy/international/377773-trump-threatens-europe-with-more-tariffs .. on U.S. products going in.”
This is odd on several levels. To the (very large) extent to which Trumpism is based on racial enmity, picking a fight with Europe, of all places, seems strange. Furthermore, the U.S. has always looked favorably on the E.U., which is, for all its faults, a major force for peace and democracy. Why rush into a spitting match with our allies that only serves the interests of enemies of freedom like Vladimir Putin? Oh, wait.
Beyond all that, however, Trump is just wrong on the facts. “U.S. exports to the European Union enjoy an average tariff of just 3 percent,” says the U.S. government’s own guide to exporters .. https://www.export.gov/article?id=European-union-Import-Tariffs .
Where is Trump getting his misinformation? Probably from Peter Navarro, his trade czar, whose star is clearly rising. And the story of Navarro’s rise tells you a lot about the nature of the Trump administration — a place that rewards sycophants who tell the boss what he wants to hear.
Navarro has an economics Ph.D. but holds views very much at odds with the mainstream. True, taking advice from a heterodox figure can sometimes work out well, since orthodoxy isn’t always right. But giving heterodox views a hearing only works if the people seeking advice are themselves open-minded thinkers, willing to put in the hard work of understanding opposing views and assessing the evidence. If this sounds to you like a description of Donald Trump, you might want to seek professional help.
In fact, Navarro’s nonmainstream views mainly seem to involve basic conceptual and factual errors. One of these errors, which bears directly on the Trump-Europe spat, is a complete misunderstanding of the trade effects of value-added taxes (VATs), which the U.S. doesn’t have but play a large role in most European countries’ revenue.
But what this story misses is the fact that when German producers sell to German consumers, they also pay that 19 percent tax. And when U.S. producers sell to U.S. consumers, they, like German producers, don’t face any VAT. So the tax doesn’t tilt the playing field at all, in either market. In reality, a VAT has nothing to do with competitive advantage; it’s basically a sales tax — a tax on German consumers — which is why VATs are considered legal by the World Trade Organization.
So how does someone who misunderstands such a basic, well-understood point about taxes and trade get to be a key economic adviser? As I said, it’s because he tells the boss what he wants to hear. More than that, he’s willing to abase himself in extraordinary ways.
I mean, one expects White House aides to share many of the president’s views and defend him in public. But this goes far beyond that. Not only is Navarro proudly declaring that he’s a propagandist, not a policy analyst — that his role is solely to confirm Trump’s prejudices — he’s also engaging in an utterly un-American level of sycophancy. Since when has it become acceptable to declare that Dear Leader is infallible?
Now, it’s a commonplace, but also a euphemism, to say that Trump has authoritarian instincts. A more accurate statement would be that he expects the kind of treatment tin-pot dictators demand, free from any criticism inside or outside his government and greeted with constant hosannas of praise.
And everyone who isn’t willing to play the full game, who has tried to play by something resembling normal democratic rules, seems to be fleeing the administration. Soon only the shameless sycophants will be left. This will not end well.
Why the Trump Administration is Confused about Trade Deficits and Economic Growth
"Trump’s Trade War May Have Already Begun"
Menzie David Chinn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael Klein, Tufts University
According to the administration of President Donald Trump, a United States bilateral trade deficit with another country raises the specter of that country engaging in “unfair” trading practices. A presidential executive order signed on March 31, 2017 required officials to produce a report naming trading partner nations with which the United States had a “significant” trade deficit in goods during 2016. According to media reports, the Trump administration may react to large bilateral trade deficits by taking “necessary and lawful action,” presumably including the institution of retaliatory trade restrictions on specific countries. More broadly, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, who leads a new White House National Trade Council, have publicly stated that reducing the overall trade deficit of the United States with all its trading partners would remove the "trade deficit drag" and boost U.S. economic growth. But these views on bilateral trade deficits and the overall trade deficit reflect deep misunderstandings of trade statistics and basic economics.
The Mismeasurement of Bilateral Trade Deficits
Bilateral deficits, such as the one the United States has with China, are calculated as the difference between the value of goods and services imported and the value of goods and services exported. Thus, the Bureau of Economic Analysis of United States Department of Commerce reports that in 2016 the value of United States imports from China was $479 billion, while U.S. exports to China were valued at $170 billion – leading to a bilateral trade deficit of $309 billion.
These bilateral trade statistics misrepresent the true value of goods sold by a one country to another due to the prevalence of integrated international production chains. Reported bilateral trade deficits do not take into account the fact that the value of goods shipped from, say, China to the United States represents both the value added by Chinese firms and also the value of inputs that the Chinese firms use from third countries, or even from the United States itself.
An example illustrates this point. Each iPhone 7 32GB imported into the United States is recorded as a $225 import from China, since this is its manufacturing cost (the price for consumers is $649, which reflects Apple’s marketing, design, and engineering costs as well as its profit margin). But out of this $225 measured as an import from China, only $5 represents work actually performed in China, almost exclusively assembly and testing. The remaining $220 represents the cost of components overwhelmingly produced outside of China, and then sent to that country for assembly. Components of the iPhones eventually assembled in China come from throughout Asia (with Korea, Japan, and Taiwan the largest suppliers), as well as from Europe and the Americas. Thus the $225 recorded import from China in actuality embodies U.S. imports from many other countries, and should not be used to measure the extent of the bilateral trade deficit between the United States and China for this product.
A more accurate measure of bilateral trade in goods would calculate the value that is added by each country rather than the gross value of the good sold by the country where final assembly and testing take place. Unfortunately, such nuanced data are not available from any standard data source like the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
What difference do inaccurate measurements make? The difference in the reported bilateral trade deficit and the trade deficit based on value added to production of goods is most profound for goods that move between the United States and China. A recent analysis by Robert Johnson of Dartmouth College calculates that in 2004 the true bilateral deficit between the United States and China was 40 percent smaller than the reported bilateral deficit when more accurate value-added measures are used. Conversely, U.S. trade deficits based on value added with Japan, Taiwan, and Korea are larger than the reported trade deficits because those countries manufacture many of the components that are assembled in China and then imported as final goods into the United States. (It is worth noting that the difference between the gross values and value added in bilateral trade between two countries does not carry over to a country’s overall trade balance since the differences between the individual trading partners’ gross values and value added cancel out when the trade flows from all countries are added up.)
Trade Deficits and Economic Growth
Members of the Trump administration propagate mistaken ideas about the impact of international trade on national economic growth. One indicator of a country’s economic performance is its Gross Domestic Product which is the sum of purchases by households, investment spending by companies, spending by government, plus export sales minus import purchases. This might seem to indicate that a growing trade deficit necessarily reduces growth. However, both the trade deficit and Gross Domestic Product are outcomes of other, underlying factors.
Consider a case where the United States has a spurt of growth due to, say, an increase in infrastructure spending. This spending will raise incomes and, therefore, consumption – including consumption of imported goods. In this situation, faster growth would be associated with an increase in the trade deficit. Alternatively, the trade deficit could very well decline when there is a recession that reduces consumption of all goods, including imports – exactly what happened during the depths of the Great Recession from 2008 to 2009. Thus, the trade deficit is not an accurate indicator of the overall performance of an economy.
Bad Economic Reasoning and Bad Trade Policy
Trump administration errors in basic economic thinking could very well produce bad effects. Efforts to reduce U.S. trade deficits by taxing imports – such as imports of finished products from China – would force American consumers to pay higher prices and could also hurt U.S. companies that depend upon imported inputs. These policies are also likely to lead to retaliatory trade policies from countries like China. Efforts to reduce overall trade deficits, in the mistaken view that these contribute to a drag on the economy, could also derail growth. It is also important to note that some of the Administration’s proposed policies, such tax cuts and increased private sector investment, would likely lead to growing trade deficits, setting up conflicts among the competing tactics of an Administration that often fails to understand economic complexities.
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