What's going on with the Executive Departments

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sessions’s aloha-baiting could bring attention to the real problem"

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Imagine if I began a column about Attorney General Jeff Sessions this way: “I really am amazed that an attorney general who hails from a former Confederate state in the Deep South can issue a series of orders wrecking efforts to reform police practices, cutting back on voting rights and restarting the war on drugs.”

The specifics of what Sessions is up to are accurate, but that knock on the land of cotton would leave my inbox bulging with rebukes to bigotry against Dixie, and I’d probably get many YouTube links to Lynyrd Skynyrd singing “Sweet Home Alabama.” (Don’t go to the trouble. I already have the song on my iPhone.)

Yet the man whose job is to be the top lawyer for all of us said something very similar about a federal judge in Hawaii who blocked President Trump’s travel ban. For the record, here is Sessions’s islophobic sentence:

“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

The obvious problem in Sessions’s comments, made to conservative talk-show host Mark Levin (and unearthed by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski), is that Hawaii is a state like every other and has been in the union for 58 years, as Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) helpfully pointed out. Are newer states inferior to older ones?

There is also the Trump administration habit of trying to discredit any judge who rules against it, the stuff of autocratic regimes. Members of the executive branch have every right to criticize and appeal lower-court decisions, but what Sessions suggested is that Derrick Watson, the federal judge in question, somehow lost his right to rule because of where his court is located.

Hawaii has been a special place in conservative demonology because many on the right, once they had to concede that former president Barack Obama was actually born there and not in Kenya, wanted to hold on to the idea that he came into the world in a location that was, well, different.

And Sessions may have picked up his anti-Hawaii cues from right-wing media, which reported that Obama had “unexpectedly” flown alone to Hawaii on March 13, two days before Watson issued his ruling, and that Watson just happened to go to Harvard Law School with the former president.

A conservativetreehouse.com blog post asked: “Coincidences? Or did President Obama travel to Hawaii to initiate, facilitate, or participate in the decision by Judge Watson?” On March 16, Rush Limbaugh got the story out there and then insisted that he wouldn’t traffic in speculation. “I want to mention also Barack Obama has been in Hawaii the past few days,” he said, but added, “I don’t know if Obama met with the judge.” Nicely played, Rush.

Here’s one good thing that could come from Sessions’s aloha-baiting: It might start focusing attention on the rest of that opening sentence and on the damage the attorney general is inflicting. Doing so would belie the idea that Trump is somehow becoming more “moderate.”

Sessions has started switching the Justice Department’s stance on voting rights cases, away from minority plaintiffs and in favor of states that passed discriminatory measures such as voter ID laws restricting access to the ballot. The new Justice Department stance did not stop U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos from declaring earlier this month that Texas’s strict voter ID law “was passed, at least in part, with a discriminatory purpose.” Thank goodness Ramos can’t be criticized as one of those island judges.

Sessions also ordered department officials to review reform agreements between its civil rights division and troubled police forces nationwide, an Obama-era initiative aimed at restoring community confidence in the police after a series of shootings of unarmed black men.

Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, called the move “terrifying,” but in a USA Today op-ed last week, Sessions invoked classic law-and-order rhetoric, saying he would “not sign consent decrees for political expediency that will cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.”

...

You don’t have to live on an island to worry about what Sessions is doing in the name of justice.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Slow pace of Trump nominations leaves Cabinet agencies ‘stuck’ in staffing limbo"

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President Trump’s Cabinet secretaries are growing exasperated at how slowly the White House is moving to fill hundreds of top-tier posts, warning that the vacancies are hobbling efforts to oversee agency operations and promote the president’s agenda, according to administration officials, lawmakers and lobbyists.

The Senate has confirmed 26 of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other top posts. But for 530 other vacant senior-level jobs requiring Senate confirmation, the president has advanced just 37 nominees, according to data tracked by The Washington Post and the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition. These posts include the deputy secretaries and undersecretaries, chief financial officers, ambassadors, general counsels, and heads of smaller agencies who run the government day-to-day.

That’s less than half the nominees President Barack Obama had sent to the Senate by this point in his first term.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has publicly expressed frustration with the process, has routinely peppered the White House Personnel Office for updates and called Trump directly to press for faster action on filling vacant jobs at the Interior Department, said two people familiar with his contacts, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity for this report because of the sensitivity of hiring discussions.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price aired his dismay at a recent breakfast meeting with his former congressional colleagues. “He’s very frustrated,” said a Republican House member who was there . “He felt it was much more difficult to operate the department and provide the leadership level that you need to provide.”

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has also become impatient, said a Republican lobbyist who is close to her. Chao has tapped an outside consultant to help her identify candidates for top jobs and shepherd them through the White House nomination process, an agency official confirmed.

In part, the delay in filling leadership posts is a result of a chaotic transition after Trump won the November election. Just days after his victory, Trump dumped New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) as transition director and jettisoned much of his work, replacing him with Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

But the nomination process has also been slowed by the unusual degree of scrutiny the White House is giving job candidates. Prospective nominees for senior posts and even some of the more junior ones must win approval from competing camps inside the White House, according to close Trump associates and Republican lobbyists.

Around the table for weekly hiring meetings are chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, representing the populist wing; Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, leading the establishment Republican wing; White House Counsel Don McGahn; Pence’s chief of staff, Josh Peacock; and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, representing a business-oriented faction, according to a lobbyist and several White House officials. For economic appointments, Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, also sits in, as does the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, when a hiring decision piques her interest.

“We make sure the people involved in hiring decisions don’t have an objection,” Priebus said. “To get to that point, you’ve gone through a long process. If someone has a serious objection, unless it can be resolved, it’s probably not going to move forward.”

...

Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser who served as a communications director under President George W. Bush, said requiring so many White House figures to sign off on appointments can be unusually cumbersome.

“There are big differences among them about the people they’re talking about putting in these positions,” Bennett said. “Of course, it’s going to take longer.”

Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, who stays in regular touch with White House officials, said the drawn-out hiring process is leaving Cabinet secretaries “stuck in most instances.”

In the interim, the secretaries are relying on civil servants in acting leadership roles, which can create an uneasy relationship given the Trump administration’s aim of upending many traditional agency functions.

...

In the winter, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson picked Elliott Abrams, a national security veteran of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, to be his deputy secretary. Abrams said he met with Kushner and Trump but was told that Bannon vetoed the choice. Abrams had been critical of Trump during the election campaign.

And at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis withdrew his top choice for undersecretary for policy in March after the White House told him it would not fight an expected battle for Senate confirmation for retired senior diplomat Anne Patterson. While the president has since named several candidates for senior defense positions, the policy post, arguably the most important person on the secretary’s team, is still held by an acting career official.

Mattis has skirmished with the White House over other appointments as well and told colleagues he is frustrated by the delays, especially since he had insisted on being able to choose his team, according to current and former national security officials.

The screening of potential nominees for conflicts of interest arising from their business activities has contributed to the lengthy nomination process in some instances. White House officials said they have given preliminary approval to 250 job candidates who are now undergoing vetting by the FBI and the Office of Government Ethics before being nominated and sent to the Senate for confirmation.

Johnny DeStefano, who heads the White House Personnel Office, said he aims to ensure that the president’s key advisers have no objections before advancing the name of a prospective nominee.

“Generally, we just have a discussion about each of the individuals,” DeStefano said. “I’m there to represent all of the White House interests. The goal is that by the time [the decision] gets to the president, he understands that everybody is on the same page.”

DeStefano defended the pace of nominations, saying that the White House is “making sure we find, in as deliberative a fashion as we can, the right mix of folks . . . who have experience driving change, who understand what the problems are.”

But Clay Johnson III, who led the White House personnel operation during Bush’s first term, said that the hiring process during that administration was much more streamlined and that he routinely presented the president with two dozen names to approve each week. Although hires for senior jobs had to pass muster with Chief of Staff Andrew Card and political strategist Karl Rove, fewer White House officials had a veto over nominations.

“People didn’t automatically say, ‘I have a say in this,’ ” Johnson recalled.

I disagree with Johnny DeStefano, they don't care about people who "understand what the problems are"; they want to make sure they only hire businesspeople who can put money in Agent Orange's pockets.

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades"

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The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be “undergoing changes” to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information.

One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions.

The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington and around the country in support of political action to push back against the Trump administration’s rollbacks of former president Barack Obama’s climate policies.

“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” J.P. Freire, the agency’s associate administrator for public affairs, said in a statement. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”

The agency also said it would carefully archive pages from the past administration.

The change was approved by Pruitt, according to an individual familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, to avoid a conflict between the site’s content and the policies the administration is now pursuing.

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The archived EPA climate page notes, in a key section under the “causes of climate change,” that

Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.

It is this language, when the site was still up, that directly contradicted Pruitt. Pruitt had argued on CNBC last month that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

The EPA’s climate change website stated otherwise, and did so by citing findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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However, the site has run into political headwinds before. Under President George W. Bush, updates to the site were frozen and then required to undergo White House review. However, this process did not lead to substantive changes in scientific content.

“The EPA’s climate site includes important summaries of climate science and indicators that clearly and unmistakably explain and document the impacts we are having on our planet,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, in response to the website change.

“It’s hard to understand why facts require revision,” she continued.

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In its press statement, the EPA said that when it comes to website changes, “the first page to be updated is a page reflecting President Trump’s Executive Order on Energy Independence, which calls for a review of the so-called Clean Power Plan.”

That site, www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan, now redirects to https://www.epa.gov/Energy-Independence, which features an image of President Trump signing an executive order aimed at dismantling the power plant rule and other Obama-era climate regulations.

In the press statement, the EPA said that “language associated with the Clean Power Plan, written by the last administration, is out-of-date.”

...

It's amazing that there is so much crap being generated by this administration. Basically, if it doesn't make the rich richer or benefit a big business, they see it as worthless.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is interesting: "Trump starts dismantling his shadow Cabinet"

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The White House is quietly starting to pull the plug on its shadow Cabinet of Trump loyalists who had been dispatched to federal agencies to serve as the president’s eyes and ears.

These White House-installed chaperones have often clashed with the Cabinet secretaries they were assigned to monitor, according to sources across the agencies, with the secretaries expressing frustration that the so-called “senior White House advisers” are mostly young Trump campaign aides with little experience in government.

The tensions have escalated for weeks, prompting a recent meeting among Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and other administration officials, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. Now, some of the advisers are being reassigned or simply eased out, the sources said, even though many of them had expected to be central players at their agencies for the long haul. The tumult underscores the growing pains that are still being felt throughout Trump’s government, more than 100 days into his term.

“These guys are being set up for failure,” said one administration source. “They’re not D.C. guys. They’re campaign people. They have no idea how government works.”

The White House began deploying the advisers throughout the bureaucracy in January, assigning them to report back on what was happening in their departments. But according to several sources, their meddling quickly began to irritate high-powered officials accustomed to running their own shops -- including Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, both former generals; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a successful financier; and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who’s been a Cabinet secretary before.

Mnuchin assigned his minder to the Treasury basement, according to senior officials at the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, administration sources said Mattis blew up when his White House-assigned senior adviser insisted on reviewing one of his briefings. And EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s senior leadership team repeatedly clashed with its uninvited guest, Don Benton, and iced him out of meetings, according to people close to EPA officials. Eventually Trump shifted Benton to a new job leading the Selective Service System.

Some officials have also been mocking the regular meetings of the senior advisers at the White House to discuss what’s going on at their agencies and how they can advance Trump’s agenda, calling these meetings brainstorming sessions for suck-ups.

“It’s like a roomful of Jonahs from ‘Veep,’” one administration official said.

Now the White House seems inclined to let Cabinet secretaries decide whether they want their minders to stay. A White House official said the advisers were hired on 120-day assignments that were never intended to be permanent, serving as points of contact for the White House while the administration has staffed up but officially reporting to the Cabinet secretaries or their chiefs of staff. The official pointed out that at some Cabinet departments, the advisers have already been hired for permanent jobs, while other advisers have moved elsewhere in the administration or left altogether.

“Most individuals serving in the temporary positions during the present transition will have the opportunity to move into a more permanent role within the Administration – either in the agency they now serve or in another area of the federal government,” the official said.

But sources outside the White House said that many of the senior advisers made it clear that they saw themselves as much more than temporary liaisons, claiming a mandate to ensure that Trump’s wishes were being carried out throughout the government.

For example, Kelly and his staff have often been at odds with the senior White House adviser at Homeland security, Frank Wuco, a former Navy intelligence officer, according to two people familiar with the situation. One person close to Kelly said Wuco “knows nothing about the mission” of the department and “serves little purpose or value.” The person said Wuco and Kelly’s staff have disagreed about staffing decisions, adding that only the White House’s slow pace in filling key jobs at the department has kept Kelly from ousting him.

“Dysfunction with personnel keeps these types of folks there,” the person said. Neither Wuco nor a A DHS spokesman responded to requests for comment.

At Treasury, career staffers have clashed with Camilo Sandoval, the senior White House adviser who once served as director of data operations for Trump campaign, over control of various projects, and Sandoval is now working from the department’s basement.

Sandoval doesn’t have a relationship with Mnuchin and is expected to leave the department next month, according to Treasury officials; he’s now seeking a job at the Japanese embassy, one official said.

Treasury staffers have also tussled with Andrew Smith, the department’s White House liaison, who has also been exiled to the basement. He isn’t expected to stay, either, the official said.

The tension between the senior advisers and Cabinet secretaries has put the White House in a tricky spot. Rick Dearborn, a White House deputy chief of staff, was instrumental in setting up the system of senior advisers and he’s seen as one of their biggest defenders in the White House, arguing that Trump needs to know what’s going on in his own government. And some former Trump campaign officials have complained to POLITICO that they’re being pushed aside in favor of Cabinet secretaries and their hand-picked staffers, portraying it as a betrayal of the president.

Nevertheless, the administration has already begun reassigning some senior White House advisers, starting with Benton at EPA. Jason Botel, a former senior White House adviser at the Education Department, was recently tapped as deputy assistant secretary at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. And a Transportation Department source said its White House chaperone, a former Pennsylvania lobbyist named Anthony Pugliese, is expected to be transferred soon.

The source said Pugliese got off to a rough start when he ordered the blocking of all outgoing mail in the early days of the administration, supposedly to prevent last-minute Obama decisions from going out the door, then neglected to lift the order. The result was a giant stack of mail full of obscure bureaucratic missives that nobody knew what to do with, the source said. A Transportation Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Chao, who already served as President George W. Bush's labor secretary, was also taken aback when Pugliese told her he expected to sign off on all department policies before they went public, the source said.

"He told the secretary that once we both agree on something, then we can push it out," the source said. "The Secretary was like, ‘Um, what's your name again?’”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Not a surprise, but this makes me angry: "Trump picks antiabortion activist to head HHS family planning program"

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President Trump is placing antiabortion activist Teresa Manning in charge of the Title X program, which provides family planning funding for poor Americans or those without health insurance, according to individuals briefed on the decision.

Manning’s selection as the Department of Health and Human Services’ deputy assistant secretary for population affairs marks the second agency appointment within three days that has pleased abortion foes and angered abortion rights proponents. On Friday, the White House announced that Trump had picked Charmaine Yoest, former president of Americans United for Life, as the department’s assistant secretary of public affairs.

Manning, a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee and legislative analyst for the conservative Family Research Council, has criticized several family planning methods over the course of her career.

“Of course, contraception doesn’t work,” she said during a 2003 NPR interview. “Its efficacy is very low, especially when you consider over years — which a lot of contraception health advocates want to start women in their adolescent years, when they’re extremely fertile, incidentally, and continue for 10, 20, 30 years. The prospect that contraception would always prevent the conception of a child is preposterous.”

She has repeatedly objected to the use of RU-486, or mifepristone, which is often used with misoprostol to spur an abortion during the early stages of a pregnancy. In a 2001 news statement while working at the Family Research Council, Manning said, “A major, if not dominant, mechanism of the morning-after pill is the destruction of a human life already conceived.”

As with Yoest’s appointment Friday, White House spokesman Ninio J. Fetalvo said in an email, “All appointment announcements are sent through our press distribution list.”

Roughly 4 million Americans receive family planning coverage through the Title X program, and the majority of them are low-income and people of color.

...

And Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement that “Trump is stacking his administration with one extreme, antiabortion activist after another and ignoring the millions of men and women who don’t want to see women’s health and rights go backward.”

“Ms. Manning has repeatedly spread false information about women’s health and advocated for policies that would undermine women’s access to birth control and other essential health care. She is a completely inappropriate choice for this role,” Murray added.

Just last month, Trump signed legislation that allows states to withhold federal family-planning dollars from clinics that provide abortion services. That move could deprive Planned Parenthood and other family-planning providers of tens of millions of federal dollars.

The bolded paragraph makes me want to scream. Of course she was with the FRC. No big surprise there.

[JMarie]

Mark Green, transgender-phobic, evolution-denying medical doctor, and Trump's newest pick for Army secretary

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mark-green-transgender-evil_us_58f8c4cce4b0cb086d7eb012

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Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green (R), President Donald Trump’s choice to be the next Army secretary, believes that part of his mission as a public official is to “crush evil” ― and that opposing transgender equality policies is key to that effort.

Crush evil -- As if! (to quote Cher Horowitz)

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA dismisses half of its scientific advisers on key board, citing ‘clean break’ with Obama administration"

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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has chosen to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, the first step in a broader effort by Republicans to change the way the agency evaluates the scientific basis for its regulations.

The move could significantly change the makeup of the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises EPA’s key scientific arm on whether the research it does has sufficient rigor and integrity. All of the members being dismissed were at the end of serving at least one three-year term, although these terms are often renewed instead of terminated.

EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said in an email that “no one has been fired or terminated,” and that Pruitt had simply decided to bring in fresh advisers. The agency informed the outside academics on Friday that their terms would not be renewed.

“We’re not going to rubber-stamp the last administration’s appointees. Instead, they should participate in the same open competitive process as the rest of the applicant pool,” Freire said. “This approach is what was always intended for the Board, and we’re making a clean break with the last administration’s approach.”

But the move came as a surprise to members of the board, who had been informed both in January, before Barack Obama left office, and then more recently by EPA career staff members, that they would be kept on for another term.

“I was kind of shocked to receive this news,” Robert Richardson, an ecological economist and an associate professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Community Sustainability, said in an interview Sunday.

Richardson, who tweeted on Saturday, “Today, I was Trumped,” said that he was at the end of an initial three-year term on the board, but that board members traditionally have served two such stints. “I’ve never heard of any circumstance where someone didn’t serve two consecutive terms,” he said, adding that the dismissals gave him “great concern that objective science is being marginalized in this administration.”

Courtney Flint, a professor of natural resource sociology at Utah State University who had served one term on the board, said in an email that she was also surprised to learn that her term would not be renewed, “particularly since I was told that such a renewal was expected.”

“In the broader view, I suppose it is the prerogative of this administration to set the goals of federal agencies and to appoint members to advisory boards,” she added.

...

Joe Arvai, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board who directs University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, said in an email that Pruitt and his colleagues should keep in mind that the board’s membership and its standing and ad hoc panels “already includes credible scientists from industry” and its “work on agency rulemaking is open to public viewing and comment. So, if diversity of thought and transparency are the administrator’s concerns, his worries are misplaced because the SAB is already has these bases covered.”

“So, if you ask me, his moves over the weekend — as well as the House bill to reform the SAB — are attempts to use the SAB as a political toy,” Arvai added. “By making these moves, the administrator and members of the House can pander to the president’s base by looking like they’re getting tough on all those pesky ‘liberal scientists.’ But, all else being equal, nothing fundamentally changes about how the SAB operates.”

Sigh, just sigh.

[candygirl200413]

And now they're going to be business people in the place of science.

[sawasdee]

Shit. I am seriously scared by the 'down to advisors'  scorched earth  policy of this administration. And even more scared that I am sure the Tangerine Toddler has no idea of the long term effects of his advisors' decisions - cos I'm sure they're not his......he doesn't have a clue on most subjects as to the knock on results, or a clue what he is agreeing to.

[Cartmann99]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"EPA dismisses half of its scientific advisers on key board, citing ‘clean break’ with Obama administration"

Sigh, just sigh.

I saw this tweet again Sunday night. Made me tear up a little.

 

[bashfulpixie]

I love that.  It absolutely kills me that we have people who are so ass backward here that we're going to end up having a brain drain if we aren't careful, where our best and brightest go to other nations to innovate because of the psychos on the far right.

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, bashfulpixie said:

I love that.  It absolutely kills me that we have people who are so ass backward here that we're going to end up having a brain drain if we aren't careful, where our best and brightest go to other nations to innovate because of the psychos on the far right.

It has happened before. Scientists in exile were a strong force behind the Manhattan Project (Atomic bomb) in World War 2, and Werner Van Braun (aerospace engineer, formerly of Germany) was instrumental in creating the United States space program. Many of our early space scientists were German.

[bashfulpixie]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

It has happened before. Scientists in exile were a strong force behind the Manhattan Project (Atomic bomb) in World War 2, and Werner Van Braun (aerospace engineer, formerly of Germany) was instrumental in creating the United States space program. Many of our early space scientists were German.

Oh I know! Which is what makes me think we're going to have a reverse one. Instead of them coming here, they'll be fleeing here

[GreyhoundFan]

Here's a new podcast featuring "Auntie" Maxine Waters talking about Jeff Sessions: "Maxine Waters: Jeff Sessions believes ‘it’s his job to keep minorities in their place’"

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“I think he’s a racist, I think he’s a throwback and I don’t mind saying it, any day of the week.”

Oh, I bet you think Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was talking about President Trump. Nope. In the latest episode of “Cape Up,” the gentlewoman from Los Angeles was unloading on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“I think that Jeff Sessions is very dangerous … and I think that he absolutely believes that it’s his job to keep minorities in their place,” Waters told me. “And so I think we have to watch him, we have to keep an eye on him, and be prepared to push back.”

The 13-term California congresswoman sat down with me in her Capitol Hill office on May 4, just after delivering a speech on the House floor against the Trumpcare bill, but before she had to dash back out to cast her “no” vote. So emphatic is Waters in making her points against the president and the attorney general and, well, everything, that you will hear her finger and ring tapping the desk as she makes each point.

...

“I’m so offended by this president that I think it requires me to speak truth to power, to say it like it is and to be as honest as I possibly can about what I think about him being the president of this country,” Waters told me. She believes Trump “colluded with the Russians, with the Kremlin … to undermine our election system and thus undermine our democracy.”

“This man has no good values. … He’s indecent,” Waters continued, railing against Trump. “He’s a person that certainly cannot be a role model for our children or for anybody else. The fact that he is the president of the United States is dangerous for us all.” And that’s not all Waters had to say. Listen to the podcast to hear the rest of her take on Trump and Sessions and the whole “Auntie Maxine” craze surrounding her.

“I love being called Auntie Maxine,” she said, smiling broadly.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Forest Gump Sessions is at it again: "Sessions weighs return to harsher punishments for low-level drug crimes"

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing policy changes set in place by the Obama administration that eliminated harsh punishments for low-level drug crimes and could direct federal prosecutors to again charge drug offenders with crimes carrying the most severe penalties, according to U.S. officials.

The change, if adopted, would overturn a memo by then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that instructed prosecutors to avoid charging low-level defendants with drug offenses that would trigger severe mandatory minimum sentences. Only defendants who met certain criteria, such as not belonging to a large-scale drug trafficking organization, a gang or a cartel, qualified for the lesser charges under Holder’s instructions.

If new charging instructions are implemented, it would mark the first significant move by the Trump administration to bring back the drug war’s toughest practices — methods that had fallen out of favor in recent years as critics pointed to damaging effects of mass incarceration.

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Sessions has recently peppered his speeches to law enforcement groups throughout the country with tough-on-crime rhetoric and urged Justice Department lawyers to prosecute more drug and gun cases.

The attorney general is considering having his prosecutors bring the most severe charges against drug traffickers, whether they are low-level defendants or not, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Sessions also may allow prosecutors to use more “enhancements” to make sentences even longer. Under what’s referred to as “Section 851” of the Controlled Substances Act, defendants charged with a federal drug, firearm or immigration crime may face enhancements if they have previously been convicted of a felony drug offense.

Holder told his prosecutors four years ago that they should stop using enhancements except in certain cases — such as when the defendant was involved in the use or threat of violence — in an effort, he said, to make punishments more fairly fit the crime.

Holder’s changes came in August 2013 during a growing push among lawmakers and civil rights groups to roll back the strict charging and sentencing policies created in the 1980s and 1990s at the height of the war on drugs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was one of the sponsors of bipartisan criminal-justice legislation that would have reduced some of the mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug crimes — a bill that Sessions opposed and helped derail.

“As a proponent of criminal justice reform, I continue to believe that ending mandatory minimum sentences will actually make it easier to focus on violent crimes which impact our communities,” Paul said last week in a statement to The Post.

The Holder memo was also supported by many of the U.S. attorneys in the Obama administration.

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But Holder’s former spokesman Matthew Miller said the Trump administration “couldn’t be making it more clear who it cares about and who it doesn’t.”

“If you are addicted to opiates, you’ll get White House attention and increased treatment options,” Miller said. “If you get picked up with crack in your pocket, you’ll get jail time and a mandatory minimum.”

Now, I believe everyone should obey the law, but someone who commits a low-level offense shouldn't have the book thrown at them, as if they had killed, maimed, or raped, which is what Forest Gump seems to want.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is interesting: "Grassley, Chaffetz rebuke HHS secretary for muzzling agency employees"

Quote

Two Republican lawmakers charged with conducting government oversight sharply rebuked Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Tuesday for curtailing his employees’ ability to communicate directly with Congress and suggested that the move violates federal law.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said the policy that Price’s chief of staff outlined in a memo last week “is potentially illegal and unconstitutional, and will likely chill protected disclosures of waste, fraud, and abuse.”

In the May 3 memo, chief of staff Lance Leggitt informed senior HHS staff members that “any communications with Members of Congress and staff should not occur without prior consultation with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation.”

Such communications include “requests for calls, meetings, briefings, technical assistance, policy development, hearings, oversight, detailees, etc.,” he said. “Your cooperation will help us avoid unnecessary problems in our relationships with Congress.”

Multiple federal departments have restricted their employees’ external communications to varying degrees since President Trump took office. In some cases, political appointees limited the use of social media or news releases. At the Interior Department, the director of the Office of Executive Secretariat and Regulatory Affairs instructed senior career officials in late January to clear all correspondence to or from the secretary with her office at least five days in advance of when the department would officially respond.

But Grassley and Chaffetz, who sent their letter to Price on Thursday and made it public five days later, took specific issue with the HHS policy. Its limitations, they argued, could deter whistleblowers from raising legitimate concerns from a separate branch of government.

“The attached memorandum contains no exception whatsoever for lawful, protected communications with Congress,” the lawmakers wrote. “In its current form, employees are likely to interpret it as a prohibition, and will not necessarily understand their rights.”

They noted that “federal employees have a constitutional right to communicate directly with Congress and ‘petition the Government for a redress of grievances,’” a right that was clarified under a 1912 law to extend to “matters directly related to their employment.”

HHS spokeswoman Amanda Smith said in an email that the department “is responding to the Chairmen’s inquiry.” She said the memo does not specifically prohibit all communications with Capitol Hill and was aimed at notifying staff of the legislative liaison’s function.

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow, just wow: "West Virginia journalist arrested after asking HHS Secretary Tom Price a question"

Quote

As Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price walked through a hallway Tuesday in the West Virginia state capitol, veteran reporter Dan Heyman followed alongside him, holding up his phone to Price while attempting to ask him a question.

Heyman, a journalist with Public News Service, repeatedly asked the secretary whether domestic violence would be considered a preexisting condition under the Republican bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system, he said.

“He didn’t say anything,” Heyman said later in a news conference. “So I persisted.”

Then, an officer in the capitol pulled him aside, handcuffed him and arrested him. Heyman was jailed on the charge of willful disruption of state government processes and was released later on $5,000 bail.

Authorities said while Secret Service agents were providing security in the capitol for Price and Kellyanne Conway, special counsel to the president, Heyman was “aggressively breaching” the agents to the point where they were “forced to remove him a couple of times from the area,” according to a criminal complaint.

Heyman “was causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price,” the complaint stated.

But Heyman said he was simply fulfilling his role as a journalist and feels that his arrest sets a “terrible example” for members of the press seeking answers to questions.

“This is my job, this is what I’m supposed to do,” Heyman said. “I think it’s a question that deserves to be answered. I think it’s my job to ask questions and I think it’s my job to try to get answers.”

Price and Conway were visiting Charleston, W.Va., to hear about efforts to fight opioid addiction in a state that has the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate. They met privately with state and local policymakers and members of several groups, including officials of an addiction treatment center and an addiction hotline, according to the Associated Press.

Before Heyman’s arrest, no police officer told him he was in the wrong place, Heyman said. He was wearing a press pass as well as a shirt with a Public News Service logo on the front, and identified himself to police as a reporter, he said.

At the news conference, Heyman’s lawyer called the arrest a “highly unusual case” and said he has never had a client arrested for “talking too loud.” The lawyer, Tim DiPiero, described Heyman as a mild-mannered, reputable journalist and called the arrest “bizarre” and “way over the top.”

...

The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia said in a statement that Heyman’s arrest constituted “a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press.” It called the charges against Heyman “outrageous” and demanded they be dropped immediately.

“This is a dangerous time in our country,” the statement read. “Freedom of the press is being eroded every day.”

“Today was a dark day for democracy,” the ACLU of West Virginia added. “But the rule of law will prevail. The First Amendment will prevail.”

Heyman said he has been reporting on health care issues for many years, calling it “well-trodden ground” in his coverage. As a veteran journalist, he is used to criticism, he said, but he has never heard of a reporter being arrested for asking a question. Heyman said he thinks the public relies on journalists aggressively “pursuing the truth.”

“If they don’t like the stories I write, that’s fine,” Heyman said. “They can criticize me all they want.”

“But just saying that I shouldn’t be able to do my job is a bit ridiculous,” he added.

 

Let's muzzle the press....just like a dictator.

[JMarie]

http://www.businessinsider.com/betsy-devos-booed-bethune-cookman-university-2017-5

Quote

 

 

Betsy DeVos was met with raucous boos as she reached the lectern to deliver her commencement remarks at Bethune-Cookman University on Wednesday.

For nearly the entire time she spoke, she was booed, shouted at, and met with calls of "Go home!" from students and audience members.

About two minutes into her address, the university's president, Edison Jackson, stopped her to address the students disrupting her speech.

Jackson said degrees would be mailed to students if their behavior continued.

"Choose which way you want to go," he said.

DeVos restarted her speech, but the threat went unheeded as boos picked up again. DeVos powered on, sticking to prepared remarks. She addressed some of the opposition to her speaking at the historically black university in Daytona Beach, Florida, asking for those critical of her to hear her out and voicing her support for historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.

"We support you and we will continue to support you," she said.

The weeks leading up to her speech were marked by vocal opposition from students, civil-rights organizations, and Florida education groups, who say she does not understand the history and significance of HBCUs.

President Donald Trump met with leaders of HBCUs in the Oval Office in February. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

On Tuesday, petitions were delivered to university leaders urging them to disinvite DeVos from the commencement ceremony.

"Secretary DeVos has no understanding of the importance, contributions, and significance of HBCUs," said a Change.org petition signed by more than 8,000 people.

Both DeVos and the Trump administration have endeavored to engage HBCUs in conversations about higher education, meeting with leaders of HBCUs and voicing support for their contributions.

But their efforts have been marked by gaffes and uncertainty about the administration's plans to help better serve the institutions.

After meeting with leaders of HBCUs in February, DeVos ignited controversy with a statement that called HBCUs "real pioneers when it comes to school choice."

She implied that HBCUs and school vouchers, of which DeVos is a fierce supporter, similarly afforded students better options.

HBCUs "are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality," she said. "Their success has shown that more options help students flourish."

She failed to acknowledge that many HBCUs were created because black students could not attend white segregated schools. In other words, they weren't providing better options — they were the only options for these students.

 

[candygirl200413]

I would have not attended my graduation if I went to Buthune especially with the horrible comment she made about HBCU's (in addition to her just overall being horrible). I also forgot Trump is speaking at Liberty University which I actually know a small handful who are surprisingly very disappointed in their alma mater for allowing it to happen.

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Let's muzzle the press....just like a dictator.

What I find so incredibly disheartening by this all, is not that this administration wants the press muzzled, but that these police people are willing to arrest this journalist at all. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that muzzling the press is against the law. So why comply with such a request? Why step in line? Because THAT is what makes a dictator: willing followers blindly and unquestioningly doing what they're told.

[GreyhoundFan]

Ooh, I would so love Sessions to be ousted over his crap: "Watchdog group alleges Sessions violated recusal rule in firing of Comey"

Quote

An ethics watchdog group filed a complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday alleging that his participation in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey violated Justice Department rules and Sessions’s promise to recuse himself from matters involving Russia.

“Firing the lead investigator is the most extreme form of interfering with an investigation,” wrote Fred Wertheimer, who signed the six-page complaint on behalf of his organization, Democracy 21.

The filing asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the matter and issue a public report — and to take additional action.

“Immediately, we call on OPR to take all necessary steps to ensure that the Attorney General withdraws from any participation in the selection of an interim or permanent Director of the FBI,” the complaint said.

When President Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, he announced that he had consulted with Sessions and the department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Wertheimer, who has worked on ethics issues since the Watergate scandal, said the attorney general’s participation in the Comey firing violated Justice Department rules requiring staffers to recuse themselves from any criminal inquiry in which they have a “personal or political relationship.”

He pointed out that Sessions is a potential subject of a Russia inquiry since he met with the Russian ambassador in 2016. In addition, the complaint notes that during his Senate confirmation hearings Sessions agreed to recuse himself from “any investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint Friday. Filing such a grievance with the Office of Professional Responsibility does not guarantee that the department will respond. In late February, Democracy 21 filed a complaint stating that the attorney general was failing to meet department recusal standards by not announcing he would not participate in campaign-related inquiries.

...

Until his dismissal this week, Comey oversaw the FBI inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether there was any coordination between Russian actors and the Trump campaign or associates.

Separately, Democracy 21 sent a letter to Rosenstein urging him “to appoint a Special Counsel to oversee the Russia investigation” and to take steps to ensure that Sessions plays no role in selecting Comey’s successors.

 

 

[fraurosena]

Who cares about human health and safety when there's a buck to be made?

Trump's EPA Greenlights a Nasty Chemical. A Month Later, It Poisons a Bunch of Farmworkers.

Quote

On May 5, more than 50 farmworkers outside of Bakersfield, California, were exposed to a highly toxic pesticide that apparently drifted from a nearby field—at a high enough level that "twelve people reported symptoms of vomiting [and] nausea and one person fainted," reports the television news station Kern Golden Empire. "An additional twelve workers did not show signs of any symptoms," the station reported. "However more than half of the farm workers left before medical aide arrived."

Public health authorities took the poisoning quite seriously. "Anybody that was exposed, that was here today, we encourage them to seek medical attention immediately. Don't wait. Particularly if you're suffering from any symptoms. Whether it's nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seek medical attention immediately," Michelle Corson, public relations officer at Kern County Public Health, said in an announcement to the TV station.

According to the news report, the poisoning was caused by a chemical called chlorpyrifos. A spokeswoman for the Kern County Department of Public Health said the department assumes chlorpyrifos was the active ingredient in the pesticide in question, but the matter is still under investigation by the Kern County Department of Agriculture and Measurement Standards. A spokesman for that office said test results pinpointing the chemical are pending but would not be done for at least a week. Dow AgroSciences, one of the main makers of the chemical, did not respond to phone calls and emails.

Many public health experts, scientists, and environmentalists have for years been pushing for a ban on chlorpyrifos, and last year it was looking like the Environmental Protection Agency intended to instate one. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, exposure to the chemical through inhalation can cause initial symptoms like "tearing of the eyes, runny nose, increased saliva and sweat production, nausea, dizziness and headache," followed by possible "muscle twitching, weakness or tremors, lack of coordination, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and pupil constriction with blurred or darkened vision." Chlorpyrifos is an endocrine disrupter, and major studies (here, here, and here) have found strong evidence to suggest that even at very low doses, the chemical triggers effects among children ranging from lower IQ to higher rates of autism. More here.

But in March, the EPA abruptly changed its stance on chlorpyrifos, greenlighting it instead of banning it. The decision, among the first major ones made by Scott Pruitt in his tenure as EPA chief, caused outrage in public health circles. Dow AgroSciences applauded the decision. "Dow AgroSciences remains confident that authorized uses of chlorpyrifos products offer wide margins of protection for human health and safety," the company declared in a press release.

The parent company, Dow Chemical, has cultivated a cozy relationship with the Trump administration. The company delivered $1 million to the president's inaugural committee, the Center for Public Integrity notes. Dow Chemical Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris attended a postelection Trump rally. Trump named Liveris chair of the American Manufacturing Council, vowing the chemical exec would "find ways to bring industry back to America."

This blatant bribery makes me so ragey! 

[onekidanddone]

EPA asked the public which regulations to gut — and got an earful about leaving them alone

Quote

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency put out a call for comments about what regulations are in need of repeal, replacement or modification. The effort stemmed from an executive order issued by President Trump earlier this year instructing agencies to reexamine regulations that “eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation” and/or “impose costs that exceed benefits.”

More than 55,100 responses rolled in by the time the comment period closed on Monday — but they were full of Americans sharing their experiences of growing up with dirty air and water, and with pleas for the agency not to undo safeguards that could return the country to more a more polluted era.

“Know your history or you’ll be doomed to repeat it,” one person wrote. “Environmental regulations came about for a reason. There is scientific reasoning behind the need for it. It is not a conspiracy to harm corporations. It’s an attempt to make the people’s lives better.”

“Have we failed to learn from history, and forgotten the harm done to our air, water, and wetlands?” wrote Karen Sonnessa from New York. “If anything, regulations need to be more stringent. I remember the days of smog, pollution, and rivers spontaneously combusting. EPA is for the people.”

Some respondents made moral and religious arguments.

“Reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and limiting the effects of climate change is one of the greatest moral challenges of our time,” the Rev. John D. Paarlberg wrote, defending the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, an effort to regulate carbon emissions from power plants that the Trump administration has vowed to roll back. “For the sake of the most vulnerable among us, for the sake of future generations, for the sake of the planet, please do not undermine the Clean Power Plan and other critical environmental protections.”

Some folks resorted to all caps.

“Regulations are PROTECTIONS. Please enforce all existing clean air and water protections and consider creating more,” wrote Kristine Anstine.

“So here are my thoughts on doing away with existing EPA regulations, or doing away with the EPA itself: ARE YOU BLOODY CRAZY?????” wrote another.

One commenter simply wrote the word “No” over and over, 1,665 times.

[EPA halts inquiry into oil and gas industry emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas]

The thousands of comments echoed those at a three-hour “virtual listening session” that the EPA held earlier this month, in which a litany of callers — some representing environmental groups, others who identified themselves as concerned citizens — urged the agency not to jettison protections for clean water and clean air in the name of reducing burdens on corporations.

Both the call-in session and the written comments included some input from those who argued that some EPA regulations are unnecessary or overly restrictive.

A paper mill operator in Washington state said rules lowering the allowed amount of a harmful chemical into rivers endangered his company, according to an Associated Press account of the call, which also noted that a municipal water plant manager asked that the agency start accepting required reports electronically, rather than by fax.

The written comments also include submissions from business leaders and industry groups, suggesting technical changes to certain rules or asking EPA to streamline reporting requirements. The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, for instance, urged the EPA to make changes to the way it implements the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the development of biofuels. The Renewable Fuels Association wrote about regulations it argued “are stifling growth in ethanol production and demand, inhibiting job creation, imposing unnecessary costs on both industry and consumers, and preventing renewable fuels from reaching their full potential.” 

But the vast majority of comments, thousands upon thousands, echoed the sentiments of Jeff Baker, an investment strategist in Huntsville, Ala.

“I’m well aware that excessive regulation can impose an undue burden on businesses both small and large. However, what is less discussed these days are the economic and societal costs already avoided and prevented by current rules,” he wrote.

“I implore you, as defenders of our nation’s health and security, to avoid shortsighted steps that might create prosperity for a few in the short term, at the expense of the many in the long term. The importance of clean air and water supplies, and of sustainable sources of energy and industrial raw materials, cannot be overemphasized in this day and age. These things are not, as many would claim, in conflict with mankind’s economic prosperity, quality of life, and freedom; rather, they are critically important to them, and integrally tied to them over a long enough timeline.”

The EPA has been among the main targets of the Trump administration, which has proposed cutting the agency’s budget by 31 percent. Trump and the EPA’s new leader, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, also have taken aim at Obama-era environmental regulations that they have called unnecessary, overly burdensome or unlawful. Among them: the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule, which sought to define what waterways the federal government could regulate.

Pruitt himself also has shown an inclination to revisit existing regulations at the request of industry. The EPA agreed to reopen a review of the fuel economy standards that car companies must meet in the coming years, based on a request earlier this year from the nation’s automakers. In March, the agency announced it was withdrawing a request that operators of existing oil and gas wells provide extensive information about their equipment and its emissions of methane, citing a letter sent by the attorneys general of several conservative and oil-producing states that the request was burdensome and costly. And Pruitt recently refused to ban a commonly used pesticide that the Obama administration had sought to outlaw based on mounting concerns about its risks to human health.

So what will come of the 55,000 comments that the agency received about its regulatory reforms?

The agency said the findings will be given to a task force that has been assembled. The group is required to submit a progress report to Pruitt about regulations it has identified in need of altering or replacing altogether.

 

Be careful of what you ask, for you just might get it.

[GreyhoundFan]

@onekidanddone -- I almost cheered when I read that article. People are sick of this administration's crap and they are speaking up. I believe you are in the mid-Atlantic. I don't know if you have seen that at least some of the Brood X cicadas, which weren't supposed to re-emerge until 2021, have started to emerge, and the belief is that the early emergence is because of climate change. But the deniers keep saying there is no climate change. Right. And I have a lovely bridge to sell.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@onekidanddone -- I almost cheered when I read that article. People are sick of this administration's crap and they are speaking up. I believe you are in the mid-Atlantic. I don't know if you have seen that at least some of the Brood X cicadas, which weren't supposed to re-emerge until 2021, have started to emerge, and the belief is that the early emergence is because of climate change. But the deniers keep saying there is no climate change. Right. And I have a lovely bridge to sell.

I saw that.  I will need to stock up the bunker with canned food because there is no way I'm going outside with those things crawling around.