Trump's bad decision(s) of the day

[*Anya*]

National Security

Trump to sign executive orders enabling construction of proposed border wall and targeting sanctuary cities

President Trump is turning his focus to immigration, and is planning to sign executive orders on Jan. 25, to allow construction of his proposed border wall and to target sanctuary cities.

By Jerry Markon, Robert Costa and Abigail Hauslohner January 25 at 12:14 AM

President Trump plans to sign executive orders Wednesday enabling construction of his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and targeting cities where local leaders refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation, according to White House officials familiar with the decisions.

The actions, part of a multi-day focus on immigration, are among an array of sweeping and immediate changes to the nation’s immigration system under consideration by the new president. The moves represent Trump’s first effort to deliver on perhaps the signature issue that drove his presidential campaign: his belief that illegal immigration is out of control and threatening the country’s safety and security.

Trump’s immigration blitz this week is widely seen inside the White House as a victory for the self-described populist wing of his inner circle — which includes chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions and top policy adviser Stephen Miller.

But discussions were ongoing Tuesday about just how far to go on some policies, in particular the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The 2012 initiative has given temporary protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in the United States as children. Trump vowed during the campaign to reverse it.

It was not yet clear late Tuesday whether DACA would be addressed as part of Trump’s immigration actions, according to a White House official, because of differing views among Trump’s advisers and associates about the timing, scope and political benefits of ending the program or suspending it for new entries. “Many options are being worked through on DACA,” the official said.

Officials are considering, but have not decided yet, whether to indefinitely shut down the program that allows refugees from war-torn Syria into the United States. Trump may also put the entire refugee program for all countries on hold for four months, according to an administration official familiar with the options under discussion.

This official said that Trump will also potentially bar for 30 days the issuance of U.S. visas to people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — all Muslim-majority countries — until new visa procedures are developed. Residents from many of these places are already rarely granted U.S. visas. Trump may ask DHS and the director of national intelligence to evaluate whether immigrants are being adequately screened for potential terrorist ties.

On Wednesday, Trump plans to speak to a town hall of employees at the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters in Washington, where he is expected to sign the orders relating to the wall and “sanctuary cities.” The effort to crack down on these localities will resonate with the Republican base, which has long criticized local officials who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Several people familiar with the discussions emphasized that the week’s actions are intended to start fulfilling Trump’s campaign promises on immigration and bring Republicans behind Trump on the issue, one day before he speaks at Thursday’s congressional GOP retreat in Philadelphia. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the executive orders were still being finalized.

White House aides said Trump planned to meet Wednesday with several parents of children who were killed by immigrants who are in the country illegally. These activists, who refer to themselves as “angel moms,” were frequently featured during Trump’s campaign rallies and during the Republican National Convention.

Any immigration measures announced by the president will set up a fierce battle in Trump’s first week between the White House and advocates for immigrants, who were reacting with alarm Tuesday as word spread that immigration was on the table.

The planned visit to DHS will be Trump’s second to a security agency since he took office Friday. He spoke to employees at the CIA’s headquarters in Northern Virginia on Saturday.

The presidential visit to DHS would symbolize some of the more controversial parts of Trump’s agenda. He centered his campaign to some degree on his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out illegal immigrants, a plan that has been vehemently opposed by Democrats and immigrant advocates.

Trump’s proposed wall is perhaps his most famous and disputed campaign proposal, and he feels so strongly about it that he told The Washington Post in an interview last year that building the structure “is easy. . . . It’s not even a difficult project if you know what you’re doing.’’

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto will visit the United States next week to meet with Trump. The Mexican government has said it would not pay for Trump’s border wall despite Trump’s insistence that the country would provide funding at a later date.

House Republicans have said they plan to fund the barrier, which some experts have estimated will cost more than $20 billion. But experts say the wall would face numerous obstacles, such as environmental and engineering problems and fights with ranchers and others who would resist giving up their land.

Trump has also promised to beef up immigration enforcement along the border and inside the United States — notably by tripling the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — in an expensive and logistically difficult operation to remove millions of people from the country.

Perhaps most in dispute were Trump’s campaign comments on Muslims. He called at one point for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States as a counterterrorism measure and said he would halt immigration from Syria and deport Syrian refugees already in the country.

It is unclear how this week’s executive actions, orchestrated from the White House, will sit with the man who would enforce them: Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. Kelly, a retired Marine general who was confirmed Friday, struck a markedly different tone from the president during his confirmation hearing, saying the controversial southwest border wall might not “be built anytime soon.’’

Kelly noted that when he was a Marine officer in Iraq, his forces secured stability in part by reaching out to clerics and other Muslim leaders. He vowed to promote “tolerance” and said he didn’t think it was appropriate to target any group of people solely based on religion or ethnic background, including through the development of a registry.

DHS declined to comment Tuesday. But people familiar with the matter said Kelly, known for his blunt manner, is already under intense pressure from the White House to enforce the immigration crackdown on which Trump built his campaign.

Karen DeYoung, Ashley Parker and David Nakamura contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...rainbow&wpmm=1

[*Anya*]

Donald Trump stopping US government scientists from speaking out publicly is 'chilling'

The American Association for the Advancement of Science warns against 'censorship and intimidation'

Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent 1 hour ago

The Trump administration’s decision to stop Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and other government staff from speaking out publicly has prompted the country’s leading scientific organisation to warn against “censorship and intimidation”.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific society in the world, said many federal agencies had policies that “prohibit political interference” in how they relay information to the public.

And the World Resources Institute think tank said the move to stop the “free flow of information” would have a “chilling effect on staff”.

In addition to the media blackout at the EPA, some other federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, were also told to suspend external communications, although the latter department's gag order was subsequently lifted.

The ban includes the issuing of press releases, blogs, messages on Twitter and Facebook posts, according to information leaked to several media organisations. All media requests must be “screened” by the administration.

The decision came after the new administration ordered a “temporary suspension” of grants to the EPA, stopping new business activity.

Donald Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, who is known as a climate science denier, to run the EPA, an organisation he has taken to court on a number of occasions.

In a statement, Rush Holt, the AAAS’s chief executive, said: “We are concerned about reports that federal agencies – including the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency – have issued directives to staff that may silence the voices of scientific researchers and others working for the federal government.

“Our hope is that this is a temporary measure put into place until the new government agency heads are confirmed by the Senate.

“Many federal agencies have existing scientific integrity policies that prohibit political interference in the public dissemination of scientific findings.

“As the AAAS Council stated in 2006: Censorship, intimidation, or other restriction on the freedom of scientists employed or funded by governmental organisations to communicate their unclassified scientific findings and assessments not only to each other but also to policymakers and to the public is inimical to the advance of science and its appropriate application in the policy domain."

And Sam Adams, the US director of the World Resources Institute, called for the bans to be lifted.

“These actions will stem the free flow of information and have a chilling effect on staff in these agencies,” he said.

“This flies in the face of effective policymaking which requires an open exchange of ideas, supported by the best science and evidence available.

“Curtailing communications from these agencies will hinder their ability to provide clean air and water and protect people’s health across the country.

“The administration should lift these bans as soon as possible and ensure that the role of science is respected within our government agencies.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7544971.html

[kittygrrl]

Executive Order to complete Keystone Pipeline that borders Lakota Reservation land.

[Kätzchen]

The last current article I could find online about 45's ability to destroy the credibility of long time public and social institutions with bad decisions, was from last fall, September of 2017, an news article in The Atlantic, although in January of this year, the NYT published an Op-Ed about 45 too, but I think The Atlantic article is somewhat better (see archived link below).

https://www-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampp...cy%2F537921%2F




What spurred me to go in search of this type of phenomena (bad decisions, et al) was Anya's article about 45 silencing the EPA. Issuing edicts to limit what people can say or do, issuing edicts to agency's that limit their ability to provide useful information about anything x, y or z, to me, in my own opinion, is nothing more than a huge red flag about abuse of power, in the form of fascism.

45 is no different than any dictator of historical record in the past or present/current day (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Gaddafi, Imin, Hussein, Un, etc).



https://www.thefamouspeople.com/dictators.php

[Abigail Crabby]

It's so good to see this thread on the Planet!! We must remove this orange dung beetle from office in 2020!!

[Kätzchen]

Published by CNN New York-Business, August 3rd 2019:

T^^^P Is Playing A Dangerous Game With Economy (LINK)

Statements snipped from the news article, as follows:

"... escalating trade war against China threatens to inflict a powerful shock to the American economy that not even the Federal Trade Reserve can fully absorb."

"It could be incredibly damaging to the global economy. The risk of a recession has gone up because of the ratcheting up of the trade war," said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco.

"The Fed keeps cutting rates, trade policy keeps getting more hawkish and the Fed runs out of ammunition to fight the next recession."


____***_____***_____****____****_____***____***___ __


I can barely read headline news about what the head-narcissist-in-DC is doing next to people's lives. I once read Nancy Pelosi's statement about how this whole ordeal (the T^^^P debacle/fiasco) is like a gigantic civics lesson on how narcissist's upend your life and the lives of others. For anyone who has never had to suffer the cyclonic effect by a narcissistic personality, then all you have to do is observe what T^^^P does on a daily basis: they implode the news feed with their latest mind-f^ckery, they f^ck with anything that will get them back into the news feed, etc.

I do wonder, though, how much longer this a-Hole will get away with upending peoples lives and the economy and how much longer it will take for people, in general, to see how horrible the GOP truly is. There are many members of the GOP who are master manipulators, masterful sycophants, and illustrate daily the level of depravity they operate from.

Just this past week on NPR, I heard on a radio news show that the T^^^P legacy will be how far he went in destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court and seating a gazillion right-leaning conservative judges to Federal Judge seats of power. This kind of thing is exactly what happens when inequity (tyrannical-dictatorships modes of power) is privileged over shared economies of power (democracy).


So scary, that this person (T/P) and his cronies do on a daily basis.

[A. Spectre]

Trump is delighting in the chaos he has wrought





Trump has wanted to see America BURN for years. That has always been his plan to Make America Great Again. In 2014 Trump wanted riots... and in 2020 he has got what he wants - yesterday he was basically calling on his cult to come and disrupt protests with the rallying call of 'Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???' He wants the country to be torn apart. He wants the Floyd protesters to be very badly hurt indeed. Seemingly he is a unique mix of nazi, anarchist and sociopath. After all who wishes for an economy to crash and burn for their own white supremacist and pecuniary advantage?

This is MF in 2014:

You can look at the president-elect himself for a vision of what is to come. He has told you his plans all along, though most choose to downplay or deny them. You can even look back before his candidacy, when in 2014 he when on FOX news to defend Russia. Why a reality show host was defending Russia is its own story, but here is what he said about his desired outcome for the United States. "You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you'll have [a chuckles], you know you'll have riots to go back where we used to be when we were great."

* Pay attention everyone, we're in for a wild ride. The establishment of white men and women who like them will not go away quietly.