In addition to his role as Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan has apparently become a TV pitchman for some rich asshole's corrupt hotel.
Paul Ryan has publicly pledged allegiance to some rich asshole, despite previous friction between the two Republican leaders.
And a recent aside during an interview with Fox News demonstrated the latest phase of their relationship.
Tuesday morning, ahead of the rich asshole’s first State of the Union address, Ryan appeared on “Fox & Friends” — the rich asshole’s favorite show on the network and one he has used as an informal presidential adviser. Perhaps aware that the leader of his party was tuning in, Ryan made sure during his interview to proudly point out the rich asshole’s hotel in Washington, D.C.
Seconds after he pointed out the Washington Monument, Ryan quickly pointed to the rich asshole’s own monument to himself. “And see, Washington Monument is the tallest thing. But you see the second tallest structure here in Washington, that tower? You know what that is? That’s the rich asshole Hotel,” Ryan gushed to reporter Ainsley Earhardt.
He added, “When I brought the president and the first lady out here to show them the view, he said, ‘Hey, that’s my hotel.’ Yeah. It’s pretty cool.’”
What Ryan didn’t mention is that the hotel is also an underperforming establishment, kept afloat by corruption.
The rich asshole International Hotel reportedly had an occupancy rate of 50 percent over the first year of the rich asshole’s presidency. That is 27 percent below the industry average of 77 percent for other luxury hotels in Washington.
But thanks to the rich asshole’s break with presidential tradition, the hotel has become the go-to venue for influence peddlers foreign and domestic. the rich asshole did not divest from his real estate company or put his holdings in a blind trust, so when the hotel brings in money, he benefits.
The D.C. hotel has put its rates artificially high above the competition and is raking in money from Republicans, along with big businesses and foreign governments that hold events at the hotel or push their personnel to stay there.
That money goes to the rich asshole, as he sits in the Oval Office and makes key decisions involving many of the guests at his hotel.
When Ryan spoke to Fox News, he could have used the opportunity to demonstrate some independence and integrity and note that the rich asshole’s hotel is part of the D.C. skyline and also emblematic of the so-called “swamp” he campaigned against.
But he didn’t do that. As he previously described the situation, he has “merged” his agenda with the rich asshole’s.
That apparently now means turning the office of the speaker into a glorified travel agent, promoting the rich asshole’s business instead of being an advocate for American citizens who are witnessing the ongoing corruption of their federal government.
White House source tells CNN: the rich asshole firing Mueller is still a ‘possibility’
CNN's Jim Acosta
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CNN reported on Monday that President some rich asshole is still considering firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller even though the White House has insisted otherwise.
CNN correspondent Jim Acosta reported the news to host Wolf Blitzer just hours before the rich asshole’s State of the Union Address.
“While the president is not expected to address the Russia investigation in tonight’s State of the Union, CNN has learned that the rich asshole has grown increasingly impatient with the special counsel’s office,” Acosta said. “A source close to the White House, who is familiar with the president’s speech, said that it is still possible that the president could fire Robert Mueller.”
Acosta quoted the sources as saying, “Anybody who knows the rich asshole best knows that is a possibility. This guy is a street fighter and he thinks this Mueller investigation is B.S.”
President Trump not expected to mention Russia probe in his State of the Union address, but source says it is still possible the President could fire Robert Mueller, “he thinks this Mueller investigation is BS” @acosta reports cnn.it/2nrt9WB
Previous reports have claimed that the rich asshole has already threatened to fire Mueller but the action was shelved after White House Counsel Don McGhan threatened to resign.
On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the rich asshole has even discussed ordering Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Mueller and his team of investigators.
the rich asshole will stop at nothing to stop the Russia investigation.
some rich asshole never tires of finding new ways to obstruct justice, but his latest scheme is brazen even by the rich asshole’s standards.
On the heels of the bombshell revelation that the rich asshole ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller shortly after his appointment, and the rich asshole’s successful campaign to purge the FBI of another high-ranking official, the rich asshole is reportedly considering another way to get to Mueller.
NBC News reports that the rich asshole is telling his friends and advisers he is considering asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Mueller and his team.
“Here’s how it would work,” a White House adviser explained. “‘We’re sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won’t be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury.”
The revelation is shocking on a number of levels, not the least of which is that the Justice Department is supposed to be independent, a norm that the rich asshole discarded just days into his presidency. the rich asshole’s latest plan also explicitly establishes that his intent is to obstruct justice and deter the investigation into his campaign, his family, and his administration.
But perhaps the most damaging aspect of this report is how casually and openly the rich asshole is plotting his obstruction. Every one of his friends and advisers is now a potential witness in Mueller’s investigation.
Of course, that’s only if Mueller is permitted to full his responsibilities as special counsel. Democrats are sounding the alarm about a looming “constitutional crisis,” and this news shows just how urgent it is that Congress takes action to protect Mueller and his investigation.
According to advanced excerpts of some rich asshole’s first State of the Union address released Tuesday night, the theme of the speech is the “New American Moment.”
“This is our New American Moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American Dream,” the rich asshole will say.
That phrase, however, was used repeatedly by the woman the rich asshole refers to as “Crooked Hillary.”
This is an excerpt from a speech Hillary Clinton delivered to the Council on Foreign relations on September 8, 2010:
Indeed, the complexities and connections of today’s world have yielded a new American moment, a moment when our global leadership is essential, even if we must often lead in new ways, a moment when those things that make us who we are as a nation — our openness and innovation, our determination and devotion to core values — have never been more needed. This is a moment that must be seized through hard work and bold decisions, to lay the foundations for lasting American leadership for decades to come.
Clinton also used the phrase at her Senate confirmation hearing in 2009:
In recent years, as other nations have risen to compete for military, economic, and political influence, some have argued that we have reached the end of the American moment in world history. Well, I disagree…I am humbled to be a public servant, and honored by the responsibility placed on me, should I be confirmed by our President-elect who embodies the American dream, not only here at home, but far beyond our shores. No matter how daunting the challenges may be, I have a steadfast faith in this country and in our people, and am I proud to be an American at the dawning of this new American moment.
the rich asshole famously cribbed his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, from Ronald Reagan.
the rich asshole cribbed his State of the Union tagline from Hillary Clinton
some rich asshole, Hillary Clinton (NBC News, YouTube)
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President some rich asshole apparently borrowed the theme for his first State of the Union address from his presidential campaign rival.
The president will declare a “New American Moment” in his address to Congress, but the same phrase turned up in a 2010 speech by Hillary Clinton, reported NBC News.
Clinton, then secretary of state, used the phrase to announce a broad foreign policy under President Barack Obama.
That “new American moment” was “a moment when our global leadership is essential, even if we must often lead in new ways,” she said.
the rich asshole, on the other hand, seems to use the phrase to tout the successes in his first year as president.
“This is our New American Moment,” the rich asshole will say, according to advance excerpts of the speech released by the White House. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”
the rich asshole’s State of the Union Speech: Full text of lies
President the rich asshole displays his signature after signing the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul plan. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
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President some rich asshole will deliver his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, and advance excerpts show he will ask Americans to unify behind him.
“This is our New American Moment,” the rich asshole will say, borrowing the tagline from a 2010 speech by Hillary Clinton. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”
The president will also tout the economy and ask government officials to reward Americans for their loyalty.
Read more excerpts below:
• Together, we are building a SAFE, STRONG, and PROUD America.
• We want every American to know the dignity of a hard day’s work; we want every child to be safe in their home at night, and we want every citizen to be proud of this land that we love.
• Just as I promised the American People from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history.
• Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the Middle Class and small businesses.
• Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses – many of them thousands of dollars per worker.
• This is our New American Moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.
• Tonight, I want to talk about what kind of future we are going to have, and what kind of nation we are going to be. All of us, together, as one team, one people, and one American family.
• Americans love their country. And they deserve a government that shows them the same love and loyalty in return.
• For the last year we have sought to restore the bonds of trust between our citizens and their government.
• In our drive to make Washington accountable, we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.
• We have ENDED the war on American Energy – and we have ENDED the War on CLEAN COAL. We are now an exporter of energy to the world.
• America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs and our nation’s wealth.
• America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just one year – isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?
• I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable, and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.
• Struggling communities, especially immigrant communities, will also be helped by immigration policies that focus on the best interests of American Workers and American Families.
• So tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color, and creed.
• As we rebuild America’s strength and confidence at home, we are also restoring our strength and standing abroad.
• Last year I pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish ISIS from the face of the earth. One year later, I’m proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria. But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/30/18 06:51 PM EST
President the rich asshole will declare a “new American moment” during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, and call on both parties to work together to tackle the nation’s biggest problems.
“This is our new American moment,” the rich asshole plans to say, according to excerpts released by the White House. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”
the rich asshole said Tuesday he is seeking to offer a message of unity to lawmakers and people around the country after his tumultuous first year in office.
The president plans to call on Congress to pass bipartisan fixes on immigration and start work on a massive infrastructure proposal.
“Tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens of every background, color and creed," he will say.
The president will also highlight his accomplishments, including passage of the “biggest tax cuts and reform in American history,” eliminating regulations, ending the “war on clean coal” and gains against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“The coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria,” the rich asshole plans to say. “But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.”
The president will also take a veiled shot at former President Obama’s approach toward fighting international terrorist groups.
“Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of the past administrations that got us into this dangerous position,” he will say.
“This is our new American moment,” the rich asshole plans to say, according to excerpts released by the White House. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”
the rich asshole said Tuesday he is seeking to offer a message of unity to lawmakers and people around the country after his tumultuous first year in office.
The president plans to call on Congress to pass bipartisan fixes on immigration and start work on a massive infrastructure proposal.
“Tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens of every background, color and creed," he will say.
The president will also highlight his accomplishments, including passage of the “biggest tax cuts and reform in American history,” eliminating regulations, ending the “war on clean coal” and gains against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“The coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria,” the rich asshole plans to say. “But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.”
The president will also take a veiled shot at former President Obama’s approach toward fighting international terrorist groups.
“Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of the past administrations that got us into this dangerous position,” he will say.
‘Perverse and Twilight Zone-ish’: Former adviser explains how the rich asshole became the swamp he said he was against
some rich asshole speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Former advisor to President some rich asshole’s successful 2016 run for office, Sam Nunberg, blasted the White House in an interview with The Atlantic.
“It’s Washington as usual!” Nunberg complained. “It’s a little perverse and Twilight Zone-ish.”
This is not the first time Nunberg has had harsh words for the candidate whose campaign he helped launch.
“I probably did call him an idiot,” Nunberg told Joy Reid in early January.
“Joy, he’s a complete pain in the ass to work for,” the former aide said. “Joy, he’s terrible to work for.”
It should be mentioned, many internet commentators believed Nunberg may have been intoxicated during that interview.
In 2016, Donald the rich asshole’s campaign sued Nunberg for $10 million, claiming he was the source of a New York Post gossip item about an affair between then the rich asshole campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and longtime aide Hope Hicks.
Nunberg was mentioned in the 2017 book “Let the rich asshole Be the rich asshole” by top former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. When Nunberg ordered a special-order meal at a McDonald’s, the rich asshole got tired of waiting, and they left without him.
In a 2016 GQ article, Nunberg had the following to say about Lewandowski: “I literally will suck the f*cking blood out of his skull by the time I’m done with him.”
By Kate Bennett, CNN
Updated 8:28 PM ET, Tue January 30, 2018
Washington (CNN) In a break with longstanding tradition, Melania the rich asshole opted to ride with the guests she invited to share her first lady's box during President some rich asshole's State of the Union address.
The motorcade ride, from the White House south lawn to the Capitol building, is just a handful of minutes, but for a first couple who has not been publicly seen together since New Year's Eve, the separate cars were another in a string of isolated movements from a very independent first lady.
Contacted by CNN, the first lady's communications director Stephanie Grisham said the rich asshole is "honoring her guests for the true heroes they are."
"In addition to holding a White House reception and photo opportunity for them, along with their friends and family, she is accompanying them to the Capitol," Grisham said in a statement. "Once there, the first lady and Mrs. Pence will host a more intimate meet-and-greet to engage with them on a personal level prior to the speech."
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the first lady arrived separately for "no reason other than she can greet the guests and he can go straight in."
The first lady's decision to hold her own White House reception for the 15 guests invited to sit with her at the State of the Union, and their accompanying friends and family, was another example of Melania the rich asshole's autonomy. Typically, the President's annual meet-and-greet with the guests in the Oval Office suffices for pre-speech pomp and circumstance, however, according to Grisham, the first lady felt a more intimate gathering would better honor the guests.
Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as George and Laura Bush, walked together from the White House doors to the same limo for the drive to State of the Union for all of the eight years each held office. In February 2017, the Trumps also shared a ride in The Beast to Capitol Hill for the rich asshole's first Joint Session of Congress. The Trumps are expected to travel together in the same vehicle to return to the White House later this evening.
CNN's Jim Acosta contributed to this report.
FBI In Possession Of SECOND the rich asshole/Russia Dossier, White House In A Panic
Things are really heating up for some rich asshole. You remember the Steel dossier that has had some rich asshole and his cronies in a perpetual panic since the first time the words “pee pee tapes” appeared in print?
Well, apparently former British intelligence guy Christopher Steele wasn’t the only person looking into the rich asshole. The Guardian reports that the second dossier was written by Cody Shearer, a political activist and former journalist whose work was initially met with skepticism because he handed it to select media outlets who, for one reason or another, chose not to run with the story when it mattered:
However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on it suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously.It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by the rich asshole’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be.
This news allows us to make sense of why Republicans desperately voted to release their FISA memo (but not the Democratic memo) despite warnings that doing so hurt national security — and why the rich asshole has personally amped up his attacks on law enforcement.
This news could be very uncomfortable for Republicans, who allege that the FBI relied solely on Steele’s dossier in seeking a warrant to investigate Carter Page.
Steele obtained the memo from Shearer after the FBI requested documents and warned that he could not vouch for the truth of the claims within but that he was providing a copy because it backed what his own research had uncovered — and before you ask, the “pee pee” incident is in both dossiers.
Though Republicans say that there’s nothing to the FBI’s criminal investigation into the rich asshole campaign, it has resulted in a total of four indictments and two guilty pleas.
Goodbye, American Democracy, You Had a Good Run.
In 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the Young Men’s Lyceum. In it, he warned that the United States’ fall would not come from abroad, as many feared, but from within. He said,
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
The actions this week, taken by President the rich asshole, Congressman Devon Nunes (R-CA), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and others may be just the latest indication of how right Lincoln was and how close we are to the end of the American experiment.
People often conflate politics, government and campaigning. That is understandable. The differences seem to become more without distinction every day. Here’s the thing: the agencies in the Executive Branch exist to promote the policy agenda of whatever administration is in power. the rich asshole’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has different policy objectives than Obama’s. For example, the federal government’s thoughts on legalized pot have changed completely.
These agencies are not there to promote candidates or the political objectives of any administrations, as they seem to expected to do now. the rich asshole has openly asked, why “the rich asshole DOJ” can’t do what he wants in terms of the investigation into any Russia connection. The reason is that they have a job to protect the Constitution and the rule of law, not some rich asshole.
This last year has seen unprecedented attacks on the American rule of law. So many times have people had to use “unprecedented” that its meaning has all been lost. By firing James Comey, forcing out Andrew McCabe and launching an endless attack on the FBI and DOJ, our president is effectively dismantling one of the things that is so special about our country. Our belief in the rule of law.
Now it appears, the Legislative Branch has become complicit. In years past, the Intelligence Committees in the U.S. House and Senate were considered to be “bastions of bi-partisanship.” In both, no investigations were to be started without both sides weighing in. Nunes, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation last spring, ended that fine tradition by starting an investigation into how the FBI handled their Russian investigation without consulting Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Once again, that move was unprecedented, but does that mean anything today?
Apparently not because Ryan has said he is “letting the process play out.” No, this is not doing that at all. Now, Nunes’ committee will release a memo, he wrote about the Russian investigation (you know, the one he “recused” himself from) without putting out the other side of the story. PS. It is worth noting that Russian bots have been pushing for the Nunes’ memo to be released. It is also worth noting that changing the rules for how the committee conducts investigations without input from the minority should get Nunes booted from his chairmanship. Ryan is abdicating his main responsibilities as Speaker of the House.
Many believe that the Deputy Attorney General, Rob Rosenstein, will be the next to go (he was hired by the rich asshole but ok’ed the extension of the Carson Page FISA warrant). His replacement may either fire Robert Mueller or just make it impossible for him to do his job.
When we start destroying the foundations of our government (the DOJ is not alone, the State Department is also being decimated from within), we are participating in a kind of cannibalism. When our government acts only to get one side ahead of the other politically and we live in a time when each side lives by a different reality, how can anything positive come from that?
For decades, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to weaken, if not destroy, the United States. Lincoln was right. They should have saved their money. We are going to do it for them.
Featured image by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
the rich asshole has proposed the most racist immigration policy since the KKK wrote our laws
The Klan wrote its racist views into America’s immigration law. Stephen Miller's plans would bring them back.
If you want to understand what the rich asshole White House would accomplish with its latest immigration proposals, consider this chart.
Nearly six in ten immigrants in the United States come from just ten nations, none of which are white European countries. In 2015, moreover, fully one-third of the 1.38 million new immigrants to the United States came from just three nations: India (179,800), China (143,200), and Mexico (139,400).
If you are, well, not a racist, these data points are an interesting window into a diversifying nation. As recently as 1990, the United States still drew a significant chunk of its new immigrants from nations such as Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In 1960, five years before a landmark immigrant bill transformed the face of American immigrants, nearly half of all newcomers to the United States arrived from just six European countries.
But if you are one of the white nationalist groups whose priorities animate the rich asshole White House’s immigration proposals, the chart displayed above represents a calamity. Every year, hundreds of thousands of non-white people are pouring into the country. Many of them will eventually become citizens. Many more will have children on American soil who, through the magic of the Fourteenth Amendment, become citizens at birth.
The complexion of America is changing. And the rich asshole White House has a plan to fix that.
The rich asshole White House’s latest immigration proposal, as Vox’s Dara Lind writes, pits an especially sympathetic group of current immigrants against millions of likely future immigrants. The plan matches cuts to family reunification visas and diversity visas — both high priorities for white nationalist groups — with legal status for Dreamers, a cohort of about 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
The idea is to offer legal status for this group, a high priority for Democrats, in return for permanent changes to our immigration system that will fundamentally alter who gets to come into the country. It’s a plan that, in the long run, will make the United States much whiter than it otherwise will become.
And it is also a plan that is likely to play a starring role in the rich asshole’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening. That address is being written by Stephen Miller, the hardline anti-immigrant adviser that even some Republican senators blame for making good faith negotiations over immigration impossible.
The Klanish history of American immigration law
Men like Miller are hardly newcomers to America’s immigration debate. Even after the Civil War ended slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to eliminate policies driven by racism, nineteenth century immigration policy was marred by laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act — which did more or less what its name suggests. Then, the 1920s saw the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Originally formed by former Confederate officers after their defeat by Union forces, the Klan quickly morphed into a terrorist organization seeking to restore white supremacy.
The second version of the Klan was at once more ambitious and more formal. As NYU historian Linda Gordon recounts in The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, it enjoyed millions of supporters and embraced an agenda much broader than its post-Civil War counterpart. It also hated Jews, whom it perceived as cosmopolitan elites, and blamed political corruption on (primarily Irish and Italian) Catholics.
The Klan drew sharp lines between desirable white people, whom it described as “Nordic,” and undesirable non-“Nordic” white immigrants. One influential 1916 text even recommended that “unfavorable races” such as Italians and Jews “be kept segregated in ghettos.”
At the height of its power, the Klan wrote its racist views into America’s immigration law.
America, according to Sen. David Reed of Pennsylvania, needed a law to “maintain the racial preponderance of the basic strain on our people and thereby to stabilize the ethnic composition of the population.” To achieve this goal, he partnered with Klansman and Congressman Albert Johnson to enact the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. This act, in Professor Gordon’s words, “ensconced into law the Klan’s hierarchy of desirable and undesirable ‘races’ by assigning quotas for immigrants in proportion to the ethnicity of those already in the United States in 1890.”
The practical impact of the law was to ensure that 70 percent of all immigration slots to the United States were allocated to three nations — the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. Klan Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans took credit for this bill becoming law.
The end of the KKK immigration regime
The KKK’s immigration proposal remained law for more than four decades, ensuring that white people would continue to dominate American society for most of the twentieth century. Indeed, the United States did not abolish its preferences for white immigrants until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
The 1965 act repealed Johnson-Reed’s focus on nation of origin and replaced it with a primary focus on keeping families together. Initially, it capped immigration visas at 170,000 for the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere, but the spouses, minor children, and parents of adult American citizens were exempted from these caps. More distant relatives, such as brothers and sisters, also enjoy some preferential treatment, though they are subject to the immigration caps. Certain relatives of lawful permanent residents also enjoy preferential treatment.
Ironically, according to the Migration Policy Institute, these family-based preferences were initially introduced by lawmakers seeking to “preserve the country’s predominantly Anglo-Saxon, European base.” At least initially, the universe of American citizens who still had close family members living aboard consisted predominantly of white people admitted under the Klan’s immigration law.
Yet as more and more non-white immigrants were allowed to enter the country and become citizens, their family members were also able to take advantage of family visas. Today, with the majority of new immigrants arriving from predominantly non-white nations, the universe of people eligible for family visas looks very unlike Stephen Miller.
Which brings us back to the rich asshole’s immigration proposal.
One of the White House’s core proposals is to limit “family sponsorships to spouses and minor children only,” a proposal that would strip away hundreds of thousands of foreign-born individuals’ best shot to immigrate to the United States. The great irony of the 1965 act is that a provision inserted by conservative congressmen seeking to enhance America’s white complexion now predominantly benefits immigrants from nations like India, China, and Mexico — and the rich asshole’s proposal would eliminate those benefits for all but the very closest relatives of U.S. immigrants.
Additionally, the rich asshole proposes eliminating the so-called “visa lottery,” a program that allows up to 50,000 individuals from nations underrepresented in the U.S. population to immigrate. This diversity visa program disproportionately benefits African immigrants, a population that tends to be especially highly educated.
In the short term, the rich asshole would reallocate some of these diversity visa slots to process the backlog of individuals who have already applied for family visas. Once that backlog is processed, however, the White House’s outline of its proposal suggests that the diversity slots will be eliminated.
The long-term impact of these changes would likely be hundreds of thousands fewer immigrants from the sort of nations that white nationalists do not approve of — a permanent restructuring of American immigration, in return for a one-time fix for a sympathetic bloc of immigrants within the United States.
That’s a hell of a deal for people like Stephen Miller. And it looks a whole lot like the immigration policies from America’s past.
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/30/18 02:37 PM EST
President the rich asshole said he will offer a message of unity to a divided nation Tuesday night during his first State of the Union address.
"I want to see our country united," the rich asshole said during a pre-speech lunch with network news anchors. "If I could unite the country, I would consider it a tremendous success."
The president added that he would like to bring the country together “without a major event,” like a terror attack or natural disaster.
the rich asshole’s speech comes amid a series of controversies over tensions between the president and the Justice Department over the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election any potential collusion with the rich asshole's campaign.
The president said the rampant polarization in the U.S. traces back to the impeachment of President Clinton.
"Tremendous divisiveness, not just over the past year," he said.
The speech also comes ahead of a midterm election year that has been marked by intense partisan fighting and a political environment that favors Democrats.
But the rich asshole is signaling he will use his speech to reach beyond his core supporters by calming some of the heated rhetoric he has used during his first year in office.
Administration officials say he plans to take credit for the roaring economy while pushing Congress to take bipartisan action on immigration.
McConnell: Mueller needs 'no protection' from the rich asshole
BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 01/30/18 03:28 PM EST
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday shot down taking up legislation to block the rich asshole administration from unilaterally firing Robert Mueller, saying the special counsel isn't under threat.
"My understanding is there's no effort underway to undermine or to remove the special counsel. Therefore, I don't see the need to bring up legislation to protect someone who appears to need no protection," McConnell told reporters.
Asked what would happen if the rich asshole tried to fire Mueller, McConnell said the question is a "hypothetical" and "as of right now I'm unaware of any effort, official effort, on the part of the White House to undermine the special counsel."
Democrats have latched onto the report, arguing it underscores the need for legislation protecting Mueller's job.
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Democratic Sen. Christopher Coons (Del.) introduced the Special Counsel Integrity Act last year, which would let Mueller or any special counsel challenge their firing in court.
A separate proposal from GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) would require a judge to approve a Justice Department request to fire Mueller or any other special counsel.
But the bills face an uphill battle to getting 60 votes. Republicans are publicly supportive of Mueller but skeptical that the president would actually fire him.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named Mueller, a former FBI director, as special counsel for the Russia investigation after the rich asshole fired then-FBI Director James Comey.
Democrats blast the rich asshole as soft on Putin with no Russia sanctions
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is the Senate Minority Leader.
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Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Cardin blasted President some rich asshole on Tuesday for being soft on Russian leader Vladimir Putin by not issuing new sanctions against Russia when U.S. believes Moscow continues to try to interfere in American elections.
“These are mandatory sanctions. They passed 97-2 in the Senate. He’s ignoring them. And he’s not implementing them,” Schumer said. “This is an extreme dereliction of duty by President the rich asshole, who seems more intent on undermining the rule of law in this country than standing up to Putin.”
Millions of Americans are going to see this video that destroys the rich asshole’s tax lies — in just 30 seconds
A lawsuit was filed against the rich asshole administration disputing a six-month delay on ceiling fan standards coming into effect and demanding a court order to enforce them immediately (AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN)
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Millions of Americans will see an ad “starring” President some rich asshole telling the truth about his new law that hands out tax cuts for the wealthy. The ad is expected to run during coverage of the rich asshole’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The progressive group Not One Penny produced a 30-second spot made from clips of some rich asshole talking about, well, anything, to produce a script that supposedly sounds like what the rich asshole would say if he were telling the truth about his tax cuts.
It’s hilarious – unlike the rich asshole tax law that favors the wealthiest Americans and corporations over those who are struggling and need the most help.
Axios reports the ad is part of “a $10 million ‘Repeal the rich asshole Tax’ campaign” from Not One Penny which is a project of Tax March, another progressive group working to “repeal the TrumpTax.”
McConnell smothers bill protecting Mueller from the rich asshole: ‘I’m unaware of any effort’ to undermine Russia probe
Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters (screen grab)
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insisted that he was “unaware of any effort” to undermine Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, ignoring reports that at least one White House employee had threaten to quit because President some rich asshole was making moves to fire the special counsel.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, McConnell shot down the need to legislation to protect Mueller and his team of investigators.
“I’m unaware of any effort, official effort, by the White House to undermine the special counsel,” McConnell told reporters.
The majority leader added that he saw no need to “protect someone who doesn’t need protection.”
On Tuesday, NBC News reported that President the rich asshole is considering prosecuting both Mueller and his team of investigators.
Watch the video below.
They're holding on to dirty money as tightly as they can.
The same Republicans who demanded Democrats return donations from Harvey Weinstein are now holding on tight to the cash they got from accused sexual predator Steve Wynn.
Ever since news broke that Wynn faces multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, the RNC — where he had been finance chair until his resignation over the weekend — has been under increasing pressure to return the money he raised for the party. Even former RNC spokesman Sean Spicer has said the party should return the money.
But current RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel made it clear Tuesday that she has no intention of doing so in the near future.
“If he is found guilty of any wrongdoing, we’ll return 100 percent of that money,” McDaniel told Fox News host Sandra Smith Tuesday. “But we’ll let due process take place.”
McDaniel noted that Wynn has denied the allegations and set a very high bar for the return of the funds.
McDaniel also tried to claim credit for Wynn’s sudden departure from the RNC.
“We removed him as finance chair,” she said, but it was Wynn who resigned after a day of blistering news coverage.
So far, the sole investigation is an internal probe by the board of directors of Wynn Resorts, which will last for an undetermined amount of time and won’t result in any court verdict, guilty or otherwise.
The only consistency Republicans have shown on this issue is consistent lies and hypocrisy. They demanded the return of donations even as their own party remains firmly supportive of admitted sexual predator some rich asshole. the rich asshole campaign senior adviser and daughter-in-law Lara the rich asshole said of Wynn, “We’re sad to see him go.”
Wynn is also a longtime friend of the rich asshole’s who has privately dined with him at the White House five times since the rich asshole took office. the rich asshole’s only comment on Wynn so far was to “like” a tweet from the Wall Street Journal about the allegations against Wynn.
The RNC can pretend to distance itself from Wynn all it wants, but it’s clearly not willing to distance itself from all of his money.
Harley-Davidson is struggling. The Republican tax scam only made things worse — and hundreds are losing their jobs.
Republicans promised their trillion-dollar tax break for corporations and billionaires at the expense of the middle class would be repaid for everyone in an explosion of new jobs and higher wages.
It has not worked out that way. Wages remain stagnant apart from a few one-time bonuses that were largely pre-planned anyway. And many companies are cutting jobs, like Walmart, which laid off thousands of employees and closed 63 Sam’s Club stores the day some rich asshole’s administration praised its treatment of workers, and Kimberly-Clark, which cut 5,000 jobs explicitly because of the tax bill.
Now, the rich asshole is suffering a new humiliation as one of his favorite businesses is scaling back its operations.
Harley-Davidson will be shuttering its manufacturing plant in Kansas City, Missouri, resulting in roughly 800 layoffs, USA TODAY reports. Moreover, the decision is due to an $8.3 million quarterly earnings drop triggered “in part because of a charge associated with President the rich asshole’s tax cut.”
the rich asshole has frequently expressed admiration for Harley-Davidson. He plugged the company repeatedly during the campaign and a speech to a joint session of Congress, met with its executives at the White House, and has generally delighted in biker rallies. the rich asshole has said that bikers “have been so good to me” and are “fantastic people who truly love our country.”
Democratic leaders have repeatedly warned that blue-collar and middle-class families will get the short end of the tax bill. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the small one-time checks being written to workers are, compared to the size of the newly untaxed profits and stock buybacks, basically just “crumbs” and a PR stunt. They’re not growing or saving jobs.
This, however, is worse than “crumbs.” Dedicated workers are losing their jobs after being told that the rich asshole and his allies in Congress were going to give them an economic boom.
the rich asshole may boast the bikers have been good to him, but he has not been good to them. Taxing motorcycle manufacturing plants out of business is a pretty poor way to express his affection.
The head of the committee to elect House Republicans admits that gerrymandering is keeping them all in their jobs.
House Republicans know they are facing a massive wave of public opposition, with cratering polls and a flurry of powerful incumbents fleeing office.
And yet Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, still believes the party is capable of holding onto its House majority, for one reason: gerrymandering.
Republicans ran a coordinated effort to rig districts in Congress and state houses after the 2010 elections, packing together Democratic voters in few districts and spreading GOP voters out over several. As a result, Republicans have won far more seats in Congress than the popular vote actually dictated.
In an interview on Politico’s “Off Message” podcast, Stivers admits the public is furious with some rich asshole, and that ordinarily, the rich asshole would be a drag in most competitive districts.
But Stivers couldn’t actually name a single battleground district where he’d want the rich asshole to campaign. And in any case, Republicans can still retain their majority, and they have gerrymandering to thank for that.
“I think it starts with the congressional lines,” said Stivers.
When asked whether that proves they rigged elections, Stivers was evasive. “You can say that, but the people elected them,” he said, completely contradicting his admission that district lines matter at all.
The recent spate of court battles proves just how much this issue matters. A series of federal court rulings have come down against North Carolina Republicans for illegally trying to reduce the number of majority-black and majority-Democratic districts, while the Supreme Court is considering another case out of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the state courts just voided Pennsylvania’s GOP-drawn map, and Republicans there are frantically trying to make the Supreme Court intervene on the preposterous assertion that undoing gerrymandering would be inconvenient for their campaign donors.
But the truth is, unlike Republican leadership, voters do not see this as a partisan issue. Polls show even GOP voters in North Carolina want gerrymandering to end. Everyone suffers when the maps are rigged, because it means politicians do not have to really compete, and often it makes it harder for them to provide constituent services.
Stivers may see this as just another way to win elections. The American people see it as a way to wreck democracy.
Holy shit: Ryan calls for a 'cleanse' of the FBI
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 01/30/18 02:17 PM EST
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday threw his support behind releasing a controversial memo that purports to detail FBI surveillance activity, saying it will “cleanse” the organization, Fox News reported.
“Let it all out, get it all out there. Cleanse the organization,” Ryan said, according to Fox.
“I think we should disclose all this stuff. It’s the best disinfectant. Accountability, transparency -- for the sake of the reputation of our institutions,” he added.
Ryan reportedly made the remarks at a largely off-the-record session with anchors and reporters ahead of President the rich asshole's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Ryan went on the record to address the release of the House Intelligence Committee memo.
Still, the Speaker urged Republican lawmakers during a Tuesday morning meeting not to overstate the facts in the memo, and not to use the document's contents to try to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The GOP-crafted classified memo is believed to contain allegations that federal investigators abused a surveillance program to monitor the rich asshole campaign. Several conservative lawmakers have claimed the memo will illustrate political bias within the FBI.
The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday night along party lines to release the memo, despite concerns from Justice Department officials that doing so could endanger intelligence sources.
Ryan on Tuesday morning also defended Rod Rosenstein, saying he the deputy attorney general doing “fine job” and should not be fired.
“Rod Rosenstein was hired after this last election. I think the people at the FBI, at the [Justice Department] need to clean their own house if there are problems in their own house,” he said.
Democrats are sending a message to the rich asshole and their GOP colleagues with their SOTU guests
"It's an opportunity to make a statement."
A number of Democratic legislators will be bringing activists as their guests to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, including “Dreamers,” local politicians, and women speaking out as part of the #MeToo movement.
Tuesday’s speech will be President the rich asshole’s first State of the Union. It comes one week after the government shuttered when the Senate failed to come to an agreement on a deal for Deferred Action Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, known as “Dreamers.” A number of members of Congress have also recently resigned or announce retirements amid sexual misconduct accusations, and questions about gun control policy are swirling after Congress again failed to pass any common sense gun control measures in the wake of several mass shootings.
Some members of Congress have simply decided not to attend the address, but others, like Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) have decided to try and send their own message about the state of the country with the guests they’ve invited to join them Tuesday night.
“This is the State of the Union address, so for many of us, the president shouldn’t be the only one addressing the state of the union,” Quigley said in an interview with ThinkProgress Monday.
The Illinois congressman is bringing Erin Walton, the executive director of Rape Victims Advocates, a nonprofit that works with sexual assault survivors. Quigley said he wanted to bring Walton to give her an opportunity to send a message about the important work she is doing.
“She’s someone who understands the brave women who have come forward [and] what that means,” Quigley said, adding that he also wants to send a message about one of his own legislative priorities — overhauling the way sexual misconduct allegations are handled on the Hill.
“I think men have a role to play in changing the culture,” Quigley told ThinkProgress Monday. “Men have to take a hard look at ourselves, our systems, our cultures… Men need to step up.”
The president himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 15 women, accusations the White House has flatly denied. As Quigley put it Monday, “the rich asshole is a voice of division,” and the congressman said he wanted to bring Walton to his address Tuesday because he’s seen the way her work brings people together and lifts up survivors.
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) is taking a similar route on Tuesday night.
“I decided when I was first elected I would always be in my seat,” Kildee told ThinkProgress on Monday, “even for the really unpleasant moments.”
the rich asshole’s State of the Union Tuesday, Kildee said, is one of those “really unpleasant moments.”
“This president… makes it really hard to take,” he told ThinkProgress. That’s part of the reason he decided to invite anti-gun violence activist Reverend Jeffrey Hawkins Sr. as his guest. Hawkins lost two sons to gun violence in Flint, Michigan. Kildee told ThinkProgress that he hopes Hawkins’ presence Tuesday night will send a message to legislators that it’s important to continue looking for ways to fight gun violence in the United States.
After a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada last October that left 58 people dead and hundreds more injured, Kildee introduced an amendment to a concealed carry bill that would have outlawed bump stocks — modifications that make it possible for semi-automatic weapons to fire at the same rate as automatic weapons, several of which the gunman used in the Las Vegas attack. The amendment went nowhere and was dismissed almost immediately by the rules committee.
Kildee told ThinkProgress on Monday that he’s now focused on other initiatives that could help prevent gun violence like that which took the lives of Hawkins’ sons. Those initiatives include additional resources for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and after-school and summer work programs.
In the meantime, Kildee wants to send a message.
“As objectionable as I find this president to be, he won’t keep me from being in my seat,” Kildee said. “It’s an opportunity to make a statement.”
Other legislators have chosen to make a statement with their guests as well. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) has invited sexual assault survivor Chessy Prout, and a number of other members have chosen to honor Recy Taylor, an African-American woman who was gang raped in the 1940s and chose to speak out despite the danger in doing so. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) has invited an author and history who has research and written about Taylor, while Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) is reportedly bringing a member of Taylor’s family.
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) is inviting Nahrain Hamama, the wife of an Iraqi Christian who was arrested and detained by immigration agents last year, and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) has invited Cindy Garcia, the wife of a man who was deported to Mexico earlier this month, despite having no criminal record.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has invited Denea Joseph, a DACA recipient who came to the United States from Belize as a child. In a statement, Harris said Dreamers like Joseph represent “the best of who we are as a nation.”
“Her commitment to the representation and empowerment of black immigrant communities is inspiring,” Harris said in the release. “We must continue to fight to give her and the hundreds of thousands of other young people like her who are living in fear, the security they need to live up to their full potential.”
With #DACA I was able to intern in a Congressional office, study abroad in Spain and Morocco and graduate from one of the top institutions in the nation, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with my BA. The time is now for a permanent solution for undocumented youth.
Joseph’s invitation comes as the fight for DACA reaches a fever pitch. If Congress does not develop a fix following the rich asshole’s dissolution of the program last September, Dreamers like Joseph could begin to face deportation in early March.
Accompanying Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on Tuesday night is San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. Gillibrand announced on Monday that she had invited Cruz, saying on Facebook that the mayor has shown “extraordinary leadership and fearless advocacy” in the wake of a devastating hurricane season.
“I hope her presence at the State of the Union will remind the president and my colleagues in Congress of their moral responsibility to our fellow Americans,” Gillibrand said on Facebook. “They must never be forgotten or left behind.”
On Tuesday, NPR reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will “officially shut off” food and water aid to Puerto Rico on Wednesday, despite ongoing struggles on the island.
The White House copied its assigned homework on Russia from the Kremlin website
The U.S.'s list of Russian oligarchs was supposed to be targeted and precise. And then they copy-pasted from Forbes and the Kremlin website. And you wonder why we can't trust this administration.
For months, Russian higher-ups had been shaken by the prospect of being named by the U.S. as a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As stipulated by the unwieldy 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), the rich asshole administration had some 180 days to detail those voices who held sway with the Kremlin – and who would suddenly face the prospect of individual sanctions. And all of them, according to the Moscow Times, were “doing everything possible to keep their names off the list.”
The deadline for the White House’s findings came yesterday – as did, late at night, the administration’s final list of politicians, oligarchs, and industrialists deemed of importance.
But instead of any concern rippling through Moscow, there now seems, at first blush, a sense of relief. Because while there are some 114 officials and 96 business figures named, it appears that the administration put little research into their list, and effectively outsourced their work to both Forbes and the Kremlin website.
According to the released list – a separate, related memo remains classified – U.S. officials determined who would be on the list “based on objective criteria related to individuals’ official position in the case of senior political figures, or a net worth of $1 billion or more for oligarchs.” But as a Treasury Department official told BuzzFeed, the unclassified list stemmed directly from Forbes’ ranking of the richest businessmen in Russia. And per the Washington Post, the list of officials “appears copy-pasted from … the Kremlin directory of officials available on its English-language website.”
So much for targetted sanctions. And why release names in middle of night after early statement that new sanctions are not needed. Another blow to US credibility. twitter.com/parfitt_tom/st…
However, according to the Atlantic Council’s Anders Åslund, the final list was actually a last-minute replacement – one that took the place of another list, compiled by experts, that actually aimed at detailing those close to the Kremlin.
At the last minute, however, somebody high up – no one knows who at this point – threw out the experts’ work and instead wrote down the names of the top officials in the Russian presidential administration and government plus the 96 Russian billionaires on the Forbes list. In doing so, this senior official ridiculed the government experts who had prepared another report, rendering CAATSA ineffective and mocking US sanctions on Russia overall. By signing this list, the secretary of the treasury took responsibility for it.
Now, where fear once rankled the upper crust of Moscow, the list – with both its slip-shod research and blanket inclusion of over 200 figures – appears to have been welcomed with open arms. And the reactions from Russians named in the memo ranged from condescension to giddiness to anger that the list was even considered in the first place.
Meduza compiled a run-down of reactions from figures named, showing the breadth of reaction. For Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, the list “looks like a book of ‘who’s who in Russian politics.’” For Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, “The West has always disliked Russia, but even in the very worst times throughout history nobody ever dreamt up a list like this.” And for Anna Kuznetsova, commissioner on children’s rights, her inclusion “demonstrates that we’re on the right path to our main goal: maintaining the happiness and well-being of Russia’s children.”
Given that the list coincided with the rich asshole administration’s announcement that it would hold off on more Russian sanctions – to say nothing of the administration’s previous slow-walking of other sanctions – the move highlights the growing disparity between executive and legislative approaches to Russia and Russian interference. Putin may have termed the list a “hostile act,” but it’s growing increasingly clear that the White House is acting hardly as tough on Moscow as it could – or should.
This article has been updated to include analysis from Anders Åslund.
the rich asshole’s pre-Harvey rollback of flood protections was a priority for his real-estate mogul friend
Richard LeFrak's company lobbied against stronger flood protection rules.
Right before Hurricane Harvey hit, President some rich asshole rolled back rules that would have made communities more resilient to floods. A new report released Tuesday by Democracy Forward shows that this rule change was a priority for his longtime friend and New York City real estate magnate who was given a role in shaping infrastructure policy.
The LeFrak Organization is one of the largest privately-held real estate firms in the United States, with holdings in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. The company’s chief executive, Richard LeFrak, was appointed by the rich asshole last year to be the co-chair of his Infrastructure Council. The controversial, and now disbanded, council was tasked with developing federal infrastructure policy and advising the president and the Transportation Department on these issues.
LeFrak’s involvement raises questions over conflicts of interest and cronyism, the report argues. These questions over his influence come on top of unprecedented private sector involvement in policy decisions under the rich asshole administration. According to Democracy Forward, as co-chair, LeFrak “appears to have had the president’s ear on infrastructure spending and regulatory policy, including where he stood to benefit.”
LeFrak’s appointment came after years of lobbying by his company against flood protections. Between 2013 and 2016, the LeFrak organization spent $320,000 lobbying Congress on “Flood Map Issues” and other issues the report states. In 2015, for example, the company criticized new federal flood regulations enacted by President Barack Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that required the company to raise the height of a Jersey City site by about three feet before construction because this would increase development costs.
Last August, the rich asshole signed an executive order rescinding the Obama-era flood rules that had set stricter building standards aimed at reducing flood-related damages and requiring that federally-funded infrastructure built along the coastline take into account future projections for sea-level rise.
LeFrak’s company, the Transportation Department, and the White House did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment.
The LeFrak Organization wasn’t the only entity criticizing these flood standards. The National Association of Home Builders welcomed the rich asshole’s rollback of the rules, which came just weeks before Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast.
In the wake of the devastating impacts of Hurricane Harvey, however, the rich asshole administration seemed to have a change of heart and said it would consider reinstating the flood rules it had just rescinded.
A leaked version of the latest draft of the White House’s infrastructure plan published by the Washington Post instead shows proposed plans to scale back environmental regulations including changing the approval process for natural gas pipelines going through national parks.
Any mention of reinstating a version of the flood protection standards is “utterly lacking” from the draft, Rob Moore, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s water program, told ThinkProgress. “The rich asshole administration set that expectation and failed to meet it.”
Having rules around meeting the flood standards would have ensured that any infrastructure that is being rebuilt after Hurricanes Harvey and Maria would have been much more resilient, Moore said. Instead, “now they’re being put back exactly the same way [without stronger protections],” he said. “That’s horrible.”
The president’s state of the union is expected to highlight infrastructure as a bipartisan centerpiece. Yet the rollback of flood protection standards is one infrastructure area that both conservative and liberal groups seem to agree on. Both environmental groups and free-market think tanks previously argued that there was little upside to removing a rule aimed at saving taxpayer money and preventing loss of life in flood-prone areas.
The RNC on keeping money from alleged sexual abusers: It’s OK if you’re a Republican
"We're gonna let due process take place."
During a Fox News interview on Tuesday morning, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, made excuses for why the party isn’t planning to give back money donated by Steve Wynn, the former RNC finance chair who recently resigned amid accusations he assaulted and harassed dozens of women.
Asked by host Sandra Smith if the RNC is going to “give back” any of the roughly $200,000 Wynn gave to Republicans last year — $69,000 of which went directly to the RNC — McDaniel indicated her committee will not.
“So the allegations in the Wall Street Journal were deeply troubling — they were so troubling that within 24 hours, Steve was no longer our finance chair,” McDaniel said. “But Steve has denied these allegations, unlike Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken and others. Steve has denied them, there is an investigation that is going to take place, he should be allowed due process and if he is found of any wrongdoing, we will absolutely return 100 percent of that money. But we’re gonna let due process take place.”
But McDaniel didn’t have concerns about “due process” when the accusations against Weinstein were in the news last October. McDaniel repeatedly called for the Democratic National Committee to return all of the money given to it by Weinstein, despite the fact he hadn’t admitted to assault or harassment.
“DNC is basically re-gifting itself a fraction of Harvey Weinstein's political contributions” Time to give it back!washingtonexaminer.com/headlines-soft…
DNC refuses to give up $300K in dirty Harvey Weinstein contributions & now even a Dem senator is calling them out goo.gl/7fuy5s
On October 5, the RNC published a press release headlined, “RNC Calls On Democrats And The DNC To Return Dirty Harvey Weinstein Cash.” In it, McDaniel is quoted as saying, “During three-decades worth of sexual harassment allegations, Harvey Weinstein lined the pockets of Democrats to the tune of three quarters of a million dollars. If Democrats and the DNC truly stand up for women like they say they do, then returning this dirty money should be a no brainer.”
During a CNN appearance days later, McDaniel sought to distinguish between the allegations against Weinstein and the 14 sexual assault accusations against President the rich asshole, noting that Weinstein had agreed to settlements with some of his accusers.
“It’s not even comparable. Harvey Weinstein brought women into hotel rooms. To even to make that comparison is disrespectful to the president,” McDaniel said. “He didn’t have eight settlements, he didn’t have women coming forward say what — Harvey Weinstein admits that he did that.”
RNC chair to @wolfblitzer in October on Weinstein: "If you really stand for women's rights give the money back."
On Wynn: Due process
But Wynn reportedly agreed to a $7.5 million settlement with a manicurist who says he forced her to have sex with him. So by McDaniel’s October logic, Wynn is already guilty.
the rich asshole has not admitted to sexually harassing or assaulting any of the 14 women who have come forward. But the Journal recently broke news that in 2006, the rich asshole had an affair with an adult film actress, and later agreed to pay her $130,000 for her silence.
McDaniel’s reference during Tuesday’s Fox News interview to “an investigation” that could clear up whether Wynn is guilty of “any wrongdoing” is farcical, given that it’s being conducted by the board of director of Wynn Resorts, the company Wynn founded and currently serves as CEO.
The RNC isn’t the only Republican organization trying to walk a tightrope in its response to the Wynn misconduct news. On Monday, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) announced that its returning $100,000 in donations from Wynn. But that means the association is in fact keeping almost all of the more than $2.5 million Wynn has donated to the RGA since 2012.
the rich asshole adviser: bitch ass scared man-child rich asshole considering ‘prosecuting Mueller and his team’ over Russia probe
Special counsel Bob Mueller (left) and President some rich asshole (right). Images via screengrab.
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President some rich asshole is reportedly ready to push the Department of Justice to prosecute Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the team investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
A Tuesday NBC News report said that the rich asshole is pursuing a “two-track strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation.”
On the one hand, the rich asshole is telling some in the White House that he expects Mueller to clear him in the coming days.
But the rich asshole also may have a darker plan when it comes to Mueller, one source told NBC.
“the rich asshole — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller,” NBC noted.
“the rich asshole is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team,” the report added.
“Here’s how it would work: ‘We’re sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won’t be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'” one the rich asshole adviser explained to NBC.
Ana Navarro schools fake Christian Mike Huckabee with the Bible after he mocks Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ana Navarro and Mike Huckabee (Photo: Screen capture and Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Republican commentator Ana Navarro wants to see former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) get right with Jesus after some inappropriate comments about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The justice and meme phenomenon announced that she had a prior engagement and wasn’t going to make it to President some rich asshole’s first State of the Union address. Huckabee responded by tweeting out the photo of her dozing off during a 2015 address.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg clapped back at Huckabee for his tweet about Ginsburg, calling it “nasty.”
“I loved her explanation,” Goldberg recalled. “She was like, look, we went to dinner, and the meal was good, I decided, I need to have some wine. OK? So, I had some wine, and — maybe I nodded off.”
Ginsburg also explained in interviews that the previous night she’d been awake until the early hours of the morning writing her comments about an upcoming case.
“For a man who gets upset when SNL critiques his daughter, is this not strange?” Goldberg asked.
Co-host Sunny Hostin demanded Huckabee “have some respect” for a Supreme Court Justice.
But it was Navarro who went for the jugular.
“Two things: one, she’s a Supreme Court Justice,” Navarro agreed. “Two, he’s a preacher. I mean — he’s still an evangelical preacher, right? Who does some TV and he’s the father of the current press secretary who gets attacked all the time and he doesn’t like it. So, I think, I would say, look, do unto others as you would like done unto you daughter.”
Since they were on the topic of mean tweets, Navarro also called out Lynn Patton, an aide at Housing and Urban Development who called White House correspondent April Ryan “Miss Piggy” in a tweet. Navarro was furious that she’s paying the woman’s salary as a tax payer while she’s attacking reporters on Twitter.
Goldberg asked for clarification on who the woman was and her colleagues told her it was the rich asshole’s former party planner. Goldberg broke into hysterics.
“Oh, that’s who this is? Look, you know, not to throw shade or anything, but look in the mirror,” Goldberg said.
Watch the clip below:
‘the rich asshole is ours again!’ Russian TV host celebrates after White House refuses to enforce new sanctions
Russian TV host Olga Skabeeva (Screen cap).
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Russia’s state television channel seems to be happy with President some rich asshole’s decision to not enforce sanctions against Russia that were overwhelmingly approved by both houses of Congress.
Julia Davis, who runs the Russian Media Monitor website, reports via Twitter that Russian TV show host Olga Skabeeva on Tuesday was positively gushing about the White House’s decision to not enforce new sanctions against her country.
“Seemingly, the rich asshole is ours again,” said Skabeeva, according to Davis’ translation. “So far, he’s being quiet and not supporting the sanctions.”
Co-host Evgeny Popov seemingly agreed and told her, “Well, it seems that way.”
#Russia's state TV:
Female host: "Seemingly, Trump is ours again. So far, he's being quiet and not supporting the sanctions."
Male host: "Well, it seems that way."
Watch the video of the show below.
Oops: GOP lawmaker admits out loud GOP plan to hold House in 2018 ‘starts’ with the only way they know how: gerrymandering
Steve Stivers (YouTube/screen grab)
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Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers (R) said this week what few Republicans are willing to say out loud: the plan to keep the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 “starts” with gerrymandering districts in favor of his party.
In an interview with Politico, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) talked about Republicans’ midterm strategy.
Stivers said that he expected President some rich asshole to be helpful in districts like the Pennsylvania 18th, an open seat where Republicans are heavily favored.
“You know, I think we need to be smart about how and where we use everybody, every surrogate, whether it’s the president, vice president, you know, other members of Congress, other folks who want to help,” Stivers explained. “We’re not going to give our battle plans to everybody, but we’re going to make sure we’re smart about the way we use folks.”
Stivers suggested that the NRCC was following a two-pronged strategy.
Politico notes:
But the first reason, he says, is a factor everyone knows about, but which Republicans rarely tout out loud: “I think it starts with the congressional lines,” Stivers said, pointing to the successful gerrymandering after 2010. Later, asked whether that validates Democrats’ argument that Republicans have tilted elections to their advantage, Stivers shrugged off the criticism: “You can say that, but the people elected them.”
Stivers said that he also expects President the rich asshole’s tax cut bill and positive feelings about the economy to boost GOP chances in 2018.
In fact, the Republican campaign to hold the House has branded itself with the slogan “the Great American comeback.”
According to The Washington Post, at least two-thirds of the open seats Democrats will need to take back the House are “out of reach” thanks to the Republican Party’s successful attempts at gerrymandering Congressional districts to its advantage. The process works by corralling Democratic voters into as few districts as possible, effectively disenfranchising their votes.
‘Devin Nunes has zero credibility’: Ex-FBI agent obliterates House intel head for doing Russia’s work for them
Clint Watts (MSNBC)
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An MSNBC panel lambasted House Intel committee head Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Tuesday morning for pushing out a memo that endangers FBI methods and sources in an effort to undermine the agency’s investigation into President some rich asshole.
Sitting in with MSNBC hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle, former FBI agent — and now MSNBC contributor — Clint Watts said the release of the memo was a major concern among law enforcement officials and suggested that political parties will use the release as a blueprint in the future to attack any inquiry they feel may hurt their party.
“What they’re trying to do is create a narrative that the investigation was rigged against some rich asshole,” Watts explained. “They are picking and choosing things that suit their narrative without putting any context around it. Just imagine the domino effect this could create if every current and future political party that is in Congress and oversight committee picks and chooses classified information they want to release against their opponent, whoever it is in the minority at the time? It will literally cause such great harm to this country.”
“Every agent running an investigation; FBI, other agents are secretly flabbergasted,” Watts continued. “They have to say, ‘how is this one piece of information I put in a report going to be twisted or used by a congressman many years from now?'”
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman jumped in to take aim at Nunes, calling him out for a “cheap political stunt.”
“I think it solidifies the idea that this is just a cheap political stunt,”Akerman exclaimed. “There is no way you can understand whether or not the FISA warrant was valid based on a three or four-page memo written by none other than Nunes, who has zero credibility. He pulled that stunt with the White House, getting information supposedly proving Obama wiretapped the rich asshole when he got the information from the White House — and then went to the White House, saying he was giving it to the White House.”
‘The fallout here is just as Clint said,” the former prosecutor continued. “It is going to impact the FBI, their ability to do investigations. I think the real problem here is what they’re trying to create is designed to undermine the Mueller investigation, that’s what’s really behind all of this.”
‘You have to wonder, five years from now, three years from now, is some politician going to dig into these records and tie me to something completely unrelated?” Watts interjected. “If I do a FISA application, will it be turn on me by a political witch hunt and I’ll be investigated for my job? Or will the president decide he wants to pressure me and throw me out of the organization after 20 years of service?”
Watts then got down to the heart of the matter.
“It destroys trust in U.S. institutions,” the retired FBI agent lamented. “What is ironic about this is: this is the goal of Russians. It is subversion, to confuse you with alternative stories that you don’t understand or what the truth is and you don’t want to know — so you quit trying. What is most amazing about this is Russian measures work because Americans do it to each other.And now the playbook is being used by our own American political parties.”
You can watch the video below via MSNBC:
Ousted McCabe could be a much bigger problem for the rich asshole outside of the FBI: columnist
Andrew McCabe (CNN)
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In a look at the dismissal of now-former Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, Callum Borchers of the Washington Post warns that President some rich asshole may have created bigger problems for himself with the possibility that the ousted official is now free to speak his mind.
Noting that another fired FBI official, ex-Director James Comey, has become a thorn in the side of the president, McCabe can now take a page from Comey’s playbook and go after the president with well-placed leaks to the media.
Writing, “Remember that the rich asshole made McCabe the FBI’s interim director after firing Comey,” Borchers points out that McCabe ran the bureau for a few months before the appointment of current FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. That means he has first-hand knowledge of where the investigation into the White House was and is still going.
With McCabe still in the FBI, he would still be under the direct supervision of Wray, limiting his role in the investigation and restricting his ability to speak out.
Now that McCabe is a private citizen, he can go where his conscience takes him — particularly in light of the way that the rich asshole treated him all the way out the door.
“When the rich asshole cut Comey loose in May, Comey promptly orchestrated the leak of his personal notes from a February meeting with the president,” Borchers writes. “According to the notes, described in a New York Times report, the rich asshole expressed to Comey his desire for the FBI to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.”
McCabe is now in the same position as Comey, and it is likely he didn’t walk away empty-handed. With Republicans seek to damage the bureau he spent years serving, by releasing a sketchy memo attacking the agency, it is likely can fire back now that he has been forced out.
You can read the whole piece here.
REVEALED: The FBI is assessing a second the rich asshole-Russia dossier
US President some rich asshole and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017 (AFP)
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The FBI is reportedly reviewing a second dossier alleging collusion between President some rich asshole and the Kremlin.
The Guardian reported Monday that the second dossier was written by former journalist and political activist Cody Shearer, and despite being viewed skeptically by media organizations he shared it with prior to the election, the bureau is still investigating its veracity.
The memo was given to the FBI in 2016 by former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the controversial”golden showers” dossier. The ex-M16 agent gave it to the bureau when they asked him to “provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation,” multiple sources confirmed to The Guardian.
Steele reportedly told the bureau he couldn’t vouch for the credibility of Shearer’s memo, “but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.” Shearer cited an unnamed source within the FSB, Russia’s state security service.
The authors of both documents claimed the rich asshole was “compromised” during a 2013 trip to Moscow “that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.”
the rich asshole ‘cheats like hell’ at golf, LPGA star says, as if anyone is surprised
January 30, 2018
Greg Price
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump “cheats like hell” when he plays golf and is not nearly the caliber of player he claims to be, a top LPGA player told a Norwegian newspaper during an interview.
Suzann Pettersen, who has won two majors and 15 tour events and has known Trump for more than a decade, employed an old adage that likens one’s golf game to how one conducts himself or herself in the business world.
"He cheats like hell," Pettersen said, according to golf.com. "So I don't quite know how he is in business. They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business."
The Norway native also said Trump’s drives often look they are flying well off the fairway but somehow stay out of the rough—and suggested he might be paying his caddies to help him on the course.
She also questioned the top-notch scores Trump routinely claims to have shot.
"He always says he is the world's best putter. But in all the times I've played him, he's never come close to breaking 80," she said, according to golf.com. "But what's strange is that every time I talk to him he says he just golfed a 69, or that he set a new course record or won a club championship some place. I just laugh."
The pair were reportedly close and spoke monthly before Trump took over the White House last year. Pettersen said she does not agree with Trump’s policies and she questioned how he conducted himself on the campaign trail.
"I'm not a supporter of what he says or stands for," Pettersen said. "I thought it was very strange during the presidential campaign that he wasn't smarter about how he communicated."
Trump has received significant flak throughout his presidency for the amount of time he spends on golf courses. He has visited his golf properties more than 90 times during his first year as president, according to NBC News, and drew criticism last year for driving a cart on a green—a major faux pas in the golf world.
FEMA ends food and water aid to struggling Puerto Rico but not Texas and Florida
The mainland has moved on but Puerto Ricans are still suffering.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will end food and water aid to Puerto Rico despite the island’s ongoing struggles, NPR reported on Tuesday. Officials have argued that the immediate humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Maria has ended.
More than 130 days after the Category 4 hurricane slammed into Puerto Rico, FEMA will “officially shut off” its mission to the island, giving Puerto Rican officials any remaining supplies before leaving.
“The reality is that we just need to look around,” FEMA Puerto Rico director Alejandro De La Campa said. “Supermarkets are open, and things are going back to normal.”
“If we’re giving free water and food, that means that families are not going to supermarkets to buy,” he continued. “It is affecting the economy of Puerto Rico. So we need to create a balance. With the financial assistance we’re providing to families and the municipalities, they’re able to go back to the normal economy.”
Puerto Ricans might contest that assertion. In the months since Maria hit, islanders have struggled without electricity, potable water, fully-functioning hospitals and schools, and a number of other basic necessities. More than 1 million Puerto Ricans are still without power and hundreds of thousands lack access to clean water. FEMA, which says it has provided islanders with 30 million gallons of potable water and around 60 million meals, asserts that only about 1 percent of the island still needs such assistance.
Reports on the ground tell a different story. Federal officials withheld a billion-dollar emergency loan from Puerto Rico two weeks ago, claiming the island had too much cash on hand to qualify. But local officials have warned that the island’s various utility companies are set to run dry.
“These public corporations are facing severe liquidity problems that threaten essential services to the people of Puerto Rico if their operations are interrupted for lack of immediate action,” Gerardo Portela, director of the island’s Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority, said in a statement at the time.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has announced that the state power company — Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA — will be privatized, part of an effort to save money. That move has been criticized by a number of officials, including San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has become one of the island’s most visible voices during the crisis.
La privatización de la @AEEONLINE es poner el desarollo económico del país en manos privadas. La autoridad le servirá a otros intereses.
Other public services are also floundering. More than a quarter of the island’s public schools — 305 out of 1,100 — could close. The measure would save $300 million by 2022 but it would also cost Puerto Rican students dearly. The Washington Post reported on Monday that as many as 25,000 students may have left the island already in an effort to find stable schooling. Those who remain face destroyed buildings, a rampant shortage of teachers, and minimal access to technology. The Post noted that printing assignments requires bringing computers to nearby spots with electricity, like Burger King.
The rich asshole administration has faced repeated criticism for mishandling the situation. The president himself repeatedly downplayed the suffering of Puerto Ricans in the weeks following the storm, simultaneously asserting that FEMA could not stay to help the island “forever.” Activists and experts alike say the island will take years to recover.
But Puerto Ricans don’t anticipate their struggles will factor heavily into Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. Islanders told BuzzFeed News they felt abandoned and forgotten by the mainland.
“[the rich asshole’s] thinking about a wall, a border, while all of this is happening here. I don’t have high hopes for what he’s going to say tomorrow,” 33-year-old Victor Acevedo said. “We’re not a state, we’re a colony, and that affects us so much.”
Whether the rich asshole addresses Puerto Ricans or not on Tuesday evening, there will be at least one familiar face in the crowd. Cruz, San Juan’s mayor, will be attending the address. the rich asshole has referred to Cruz as an “ingrate” and accused her of poor leadership. The mayor herself has not let up in her criticism of the White House. On Tuesday morning she tweeted out NPR’s coverage of FEMA’s decision to end food and water aid to Puerto Rico.
“This is the kind of indifference that must be stopped,” she wrote. “Enough.”
Immigrants to attend State of the Union so the rich asshole can see ‘the type of person that he is hurting’
"I wanted to make sure that some rich asshole could see with his own eye the type of person that he is hurting through his policy."
Several Democratic lawmakers will bring immigrants to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address as a way to symbolically criticize President some rich asshole on the various ways his harsh immigration policies would target people with longstanding ties to their communities.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) will be attending with 23-year-old Jung Bin Cho, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiary living in northern Virginia who came to the country as a seven-year-old from South Korea. Because of DACA, Cho received temporary work authorization and deportation relief, and is now an immigrant rights fellow at the grassroots immigrant rights group National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC).
“[My parents] came to Virginia — they wanted their kids to have the best education possible and to achieve the American dream,” Cho said in a phone interview. “Since America had a great reputation for the best schools in the world, my parents wanted me to go to a four-year college and become successful in America.”
Cho said it would be an honor to sit next to the congresswoman because she “showed leadership” last month as she staged a protest with other Democratic lawmakers in Washington, D.C. on behalf of young immigrants like Cho known as “Dreamers.” Capitol Police arrested Chu along with 181 other people at the protest. She received charges of “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.” The congresswoman also paid a fine.
“I was very grateful for that — that she was willing to be a true champion of our undocumented and Dreamer [population],” Cho said.
“To rip them up by their roots and to deport them is beyond imagination.”
“These Dreamers have set roots here,” Rep. Chu told ThinkProgress in a phone interview last week. “They’ve gone to college. Many of them have their jobs. They’ve contributed to their country. To rip them up by their roots and to deport them is beyond imagination. I wanted to make sure that some rich asshole could see with his own eye the type of person that he is hurting through his policy. In addition to this, I wanted to make sure that some rich asshole and everybody else knows that there are Asian American Pacific Islanders [AAPI] Dreamers.”
Because the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are of Latin American descent, people don’t generally think of Cho when they see Dreamers. Roughly 1.5 million undocumented immigrants are of Asian descent. Of those, 200,000 are South Koreans.
“I wanted to put another face out there that not only Hispanics are impacted, but Asians are impacted — South Korea is one of the next top populations affected besides Hispanics,” Cho said, referring to the roughly 130,000 DACA recipients like himself.
Chu invited Cho to the State of the Union due to the president’s decision in September 2017 to phase out the DACA program and end the renewal process of hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose statuses expire after March 5, 2017. A federal judge has since temporarily reversed course and given current DACA recipients the chance to renew their statuses, but the administration is not required to accept new applications. Cho is among those who have reapplied for a status renewal. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in and allow the White House to end the DACA program.
Chu said Cho is just one of many Dreamers she has met who expressed their fears of being deported back to countries where they do not have any established connections. She said she met another DACA recipient born in Peru to Chinese parents. The family immigrated to the United States, but the parents were deported.
“If DACA ends, can you imagine?,” Chu exclaimed. “He would be deported to Peru, a country that he truly knows nothing about and where he doesn’t speak the language at all.”
Because Dreamers matter dearly to Chu, to a point where she risked arrest, earlier this month she signed onto the Uniting and Securing America (USA) Act, a bipartisan bill that grants DACA recipients the ability to eventually become citizens, eliminates immigration court backlogs, and includes border security technology, barriers, and tools that impede border crossers. The cosponsors include 25 Republicans and 25 Democrats, but the bill has not made it to the House floor.
“Speaker Ryan doesn’t want to put it on the floor and he’s listening to the far right, extreme Tea Party elements of the Republican Caucus,” Chu explained. “They have told him that under no circumstances would they allow it to be put on the floor. And yet it could pass now. We could solve this problem with a standalone bill like the Hurd-Aguilar bill. We are in a crisis situation and that’s why I’m bringing this Dreamer to the State of the Union.”
The Hurd-Aguilar bill could conceivably pass the House floor with support from all 193 Democrats and exactly 25 Republicans. It’s unclear whether the House bill would have a chance, but the White House has already passed over a similar bipartisan bill cosponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the Senate.
“The values of America is that we want to keep families together,” Cho said. “We don’t want to separate families and that’s not what America stands for.”
The White House recently released a legislative immigration framework that congressional lawmakers have either called generous or xenophobic. That plan includes the elimination to certain pathways of legal immigration, increased federal immigration agents throughout the United States, and an earned pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, or immigrants who came to the country as children.
On the face of it, the plan is a composite of what polls well with Americans. Americans support Dreamers. Americans also support border security. Yet the rich asshole framework faces opposition on both sides. Dreamers say the bill amounts to cruelty because they will be saved while their undocumented parents won’t be. Republicans have meanwhile labeled the bill as “amnesty.”
The White House plan and many of the current conversations around immigration only focus on Dreamers, who in fairness, make up a significant part of the undocumented population and are at risk of deportation. But the White House has also made other major cuts to immigration programs that could have significant ripple effects throughout the American economy in years to come.
Since last year, the rich asshole administration has systemically phased out the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, leaving about 300,000 people in a similar situation as Dreamers. The TPS program granted work authorization generally in 18-month increments to people fleeing various forms of violence, persecution, war, or natural disasters. These programs have been renewed repeatedly by various presidential administrations since their initial issuance. Like DACA, TPS does not provide any sort of pathway into citizenship, which leaves recipients at the whim of presidents who want to get rid of the program.
More than 250,000 people have been affected by President’s the rich asshole decisions on TPS. That’s why Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) has invited Edenilson Granados, a TPS beneficiary from El Salvador who has been in the United States since 1999, to the State of the Union.
Since coming to the country with TPS, Granados has worked for 18 years at Kettle Cuisine, a producer of wholesale frozen and refrigerated soups that employs about two dozen employees.
“He’s a part of the community and he’s an essential part of the economy,” Moulton told ThinkProgress in a phone interview Monday. “The CEO of the company said he’s an essential worker, a supervisor that he can’t afford to lose.”
“And yet President some rich asshole wants to deport him to a country he barely knows, to El Salvador, a place he hasn’t been since he was a kid,” Moulton said. “[the rich asshole] will break up this American family. [the rich asshole] will hurt this business that’s essential to our local economy. [the rich asshole] will tear apart this community all in the name of his ideological immigration policies that’s out of touch with reality and out of touch with our values.”
When the rich asshole administration cancelled the TPS program for El Salvador in January 2018 — giving Salvadorans until September 9, 2019 to renew their current status one final time — the president threw the lives of roughly 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants into disarray. People like Granados, who have lived in the country for decades and have U.S. citizen children, scrambled to figure out what to do with their jobs and families.
“I love this country. I feel I am part of this country. I’ve lived in this country for more years than El Salvador,” Granados said, according to a press release. “Right now, it’s very tough for us. I look forward to attending the State of the Union, and I hope the Congress and people in power can give us the opportunity to stay more in this country. I hope they can think about it like a father or a mother and make a better decision about giving us the opportunity to keep living the American Dream.”
“I think most Americans know sending all these people to, essentially foreign countries they barely even know, is totally against our values,” Moulton explained. “I think not as many Americans appreciate just how essential this is to our economy so we’ve got to recognize there are so many ways immigrants contribute to our communities and to our country.”
As Moulton referenced, even if Americans don’t know any TPS recipients, they may have eaten a product produced by one. More than 80 percent of TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti are in the labor force, according to an Immigration Policy Council fact sheet, with TPS workers generally working in the construction and restaurant and food services industries. That’s in part why Kettle Cuisine CEO Liam McClennon grew very concerned when the rich asshole administration ended TPS for El Salvador, because he knows exactly how invaluable Granados is to his company.
“The recent news about the suspension of the TPS program has really caused a lot of anxiety, both for us as individuals on the human level, but also on a business level,” McClennon said in a video featuring Granados. “We are making a product that relies on an incredible amount of artisan skills. We’ve come over the years to rely enormously on the people of El Salvador who have been here for a very long time and they have grown and developed into a wide variety of highly skilled rolls that matter enormously to our ability to produce a safe, high-quality soup product.”
“When the rich asshole attacks them for wanting to simply have the chance of staying alive by coming to America, he’s hurting our national security.”
Beyond the scope of TPS and DACA expired statuses, Moulton says that some immigration restrictions — particularly policies like the ban that severely restricts travel from several Muslim-majority countries — hurt national security concerns more than they help. Moulton would know. He is a U.S. Marine war veteran who did four tours in Iraq over five years and received two medals of valor. He also opened his home to refugees in 2015 when Republicans debated shutting U.S. borders to on Syrian refugees fleeing violence and war.
“It’s harmful to our national security,” Moulton said. “When [the rich asshole] attacks refugees — like the translators who put their lives on the line not just for their country but for ours — when the rich asshole attacks them for wanting to simply have the chance of staying alive by coming to America, he’s hurting our national security.”
“[the rich asshole] is going to make it much harder for American troops to find allies like that in a fight against terror in the future,” Moulton explained. “It’s going to make it much harder for anybody to trust Americans when we tell them we need them to be intelligence sources and we need them to help in the fight against terror across the globe. So some rich asshole isn’t just doing something that’s against our values, against our proud American history of taking in the oppressed from across the globe. It’s something that’s directly harmful to our troops and to our national security and that’s just another example of some rich asshole is a truly dangerous Commander-in-Chief.”
FEMA to ‘officially shut off’ food and water aid to Puerto Rico
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 01/30/18 08:28 AM EST
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced Tuesday that it will end free supplies of food and water in Puerto Rico this week as the island's supermarkets and other businesses reopen following Hurricane Maria.
NPR reported Tuesday that FEMA will "officially shut off" aid to the island on Wednesday after providing more than 30 million gallons of drinking water and 60 million meals to its inhabitants.
"The reality is that we just need to look around. Supermarkets are open, and things are going back to normal," FEMA Puerto Rico director Alejandro De La Campa told NPR.
Not all of Puerto Rico's government officials agree with the agency's decision to end aid this week. Morovis Mayor Carmen Maldonado told NPR that in her town, the number of customers without power restored to their homes is close to 80 percent and that most residents can't afford the cost of a generator.
"There are some municipalities that may not need the help anymore, because they've got nearly 100 percent of their energy and water back," she said. "Ours is not so lucky."
"This is all something that FEMA should contemplate before eliminating its delivery of these supplies," the mayor added.
De La Campa addressed the need for families to go back to supermarkets and boost the Puerto Rican economy.
"If we're giving free water and food, that means that families are not going to supermarkets to buy," he added. "It is affecting the economy of Puerto Rico. So we need to create a balance. With the financial assistance we're providing to families and the municipalities, they're able to go back to the normal economy."
Statistics from Puerto Rico's government claim that power has been restored to about 80 percent of the island, while fresh water has been restored to 96 percent of the territory's residents.
In November, the island's top emergency management official resigned over the slow response to Hurricanes Maria and Irma, which devastated the island last year and left millions without power and drinking water.
Five things to watch for in the rich asshole’s State of the Union
BY MELANIE ZANONA AND CRISTINA MARCOS - 01/30/18 06:00 AM EST
President the rich asshole will deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, a week after a three-day government shutdown was sparked by a bitter partisan fight over immigration.
The drama over efforts to protect so-called Dreamers is sure to grab some of the spotlight during the highly anticipated address, though the rich asshole is also expected to use the stage to take an economic victory lap and pitch a bipartisan infrastructure plan to Congress.
The State of the Union also comes against the backdrop of the intensifying Russia probe and other controversies surrounding the rich asshole’s White House — and it’s anyone’s guess whether the unconventional president will stick to the script or shoot from the hip.
Here are five things to watch for during the rich asshole’s inaugural State of the Union address.
Does the rich asshole move the needle on the immigration debate?
The fate of young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children is sure to be a hot topic on Tuesday night.
the rich asshole rescinded the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed Dreamers to work and go to school here, and gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a permanent legal solution.
But Congress has been at an impasse over how to resolve the issue, which led to the shutdown earlier this month.
The White House unveiled a legislative framework last week that would offer 1.8 million people a pathway to citizenship in exchange for $25 billion for the rich asshole’s signature campaign promise of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It would also eliminate the diversity visa lottery and limit family-based migration.
The plan, however, has faced blowback from both parties, with Republicans balking at the prospect of providing “amnesty” and Democrats worried about the proposed dramatic changes to the U.S. immigration system.
“It’s got to be bipartisan because the Republicans really don’t have the votes to get it done in any other way, so it has to be bipartisan. But hopefully the Democrats will join us, or enough of them will join us, so we can really do something great, for DACA and for immigration generally,” the rich asshole said Monday.
the rich asshole could use his bully pulpit Tuesday night to ratchet up the pressure on both Democrats and Republicans to get on board with his proposal.
And Democrats, likewise, will try to keep the heat on the White House and Congress to protect Dreamers from being deported.
Some Democrats are bringing Dreamers as their guests to the rich asshole’s address, while at least one GOP lawmaker, centrist Rep. Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), is making the same gesture.
the rich asshole, meanwhile, is inviting parents of girls murdered by the gang MS-13, as well as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of investigations that have led to MS-13 arrests.
the rich asshole’s decision attracted criticism from Democrats, with Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) calling it “manipulative,” “exploitative” and “bigoted.”
The ‘Me Too’ movement
There won’t be a red carpet, but the audience at the State of the Union will bear some resemblance to the Golden Globes earlier this month. Female — and some male — lawmakers will be wearing black to show solidarity with victims of sexual misconduct, just as Hollywood actors did at the awards show three weeks ago.
They had been planning on some sort of gesture after wearing white — the color associated with suffragettes — to the rich asshole’s first address to a joint session of Congress last year. Female members settled on wearing black after seeing the Golden Globes display.
Many legislators are bringing guests associated with the “Me Too” movement highlighting sexual misconduct in the workplace. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), for instance, is hosting Travis Moore, a former House aide who organized a letter of other former staffers calling for reforming Capitol Hill’s sexual harassment policies. And Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) is bringing Anny Gonzalez, an airplane cleaner who was sexually harassed at her job.
Tuesday’s address will come a day after the House passed legislation to require athletic organizations to swiftly report sexual abuse and establish policies to prevent it from happening in the first place. Consideration of the bill follows last week’s sentencing of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar for sexually abusing more than 150 young female athletes.
Boycotts
Roughly a dozen House Democrats are skipping the rich asshole’s speech entirely. After watching the rich asshole’s first year in office, they say they have no interest in attending.
“This is a presidency that has been built on racism, stupidity and lies, which has already wasted enough of America’s time, and I will not waste any more of mine,” Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said while announcing his boycott.
Only two Democrats, Reps. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and Al Green (Texas), made a show of not attending the rich asshole’s address to Congress last year.
But the number of Democratic boycotts this year has spiked, particularly after lawmakers expressed outrage over the rich asshole’s reported comments describing some nations as “shithole countries” earlier this month.
The members skipping the speech plan to take part in other events. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), for example, is speaking at a counterevent with liberal activists.
Does the rich asshole stay on script?
the rich asshole mostly stuck to the script last year when he addressed a joint session of Congress, delivering a largely measured speech that earned him positive media coverage and praise from lawmakers.
But one year into his presidency — and with the Russia probes looming large — will the rich asshole stay on message, or will he shake up the format of one of America’s oldest political rituals?
the rich asshole is expected to tout the recently passed GOP tax law and lay out his 2018 agenda, which will center on a $1 trillion infrastructure package.
But the rich asshole is also known to speak off the cuff, and he relishes in going after his critics, especially when he feels attacked.
The president will have plenty of material to choose from on Tuesday, including a bombshell tell-all book that dropped this month and a recent New York Times report that the president tried to fire the special counsel investigating possible connections between his campaign and Russia.
the rich asshole’s speech will also follow a vote by the House Intelligence Committee to release a memo that Republicans say exposes political bias in the FBI probe, a topic that the rich asshole may find difficult to resist.
What is the Democratic message?
Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) will be in the spotlight Tuesday night when he delivers the official Democratic Party response to the rich asshole’s address. The rising Democratic star, 37, is expected to speak from Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School in Fall River, Mass., rather than from Washington.
For Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson, it will be a big platform to introduce himself to the American public. Kennedy has served in Congress since 2013.
Other Democrats seeking to boost their own profiles will also be offering rebuttals.
Waters, whose name recognition has skyrocketed in the past year for her no-holds-barred criticism of the rich asshole, is boycotting the president’s speech.
“What does he have to say that I would be interested in?” she said on MSNBC this month.
But Waters will speak on BET after the address as part of special network programming, according to BuzzFeed.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a potential 2020 presidential contender, also plans to deliver a response to the rich asshole’s State of the Union, as he did after the joint session address last year.
Ana Navarro mocks the rich asshole State of the Union ticket typo: ‘Could be the State of the Covfefe’
Ana Navarro (Photo: Twitter)
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President some rich asshole’s first State of the Union had a glitch: it’s the State of the Uniom. Monday it was reported there is a typo on the tickets being given to guests of elected officials in the gallery.
But, CNN contributor and Republican strategist Ana Navarro remarked the typo could just as easily be the “State of the Covfefe” considering it’s the rich asshole’s first official bicameral address.
The White House has become known for its amusing typos. In a May 2017, the White House released a statement saying one of the president’s goals during his trip to Israel was to “promote the possibility of lasting peach” in the region.
To make matters worse, the a few lines before that, the White House misspelled the “Sepulchre” in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, inserted a random apostrophe in the word “Israelis,” and left a “d” off the word “coupled.”
Press statement @WhiteHouse says 1 goals of @POTUS Israel trip is "promote the possibility of lasting peach"
When former Gov. Jon Huntsman was appointed ambassador to Russia, they misspelled his name.
In December 2016, the rich asshole tweeted “Unpresidented” instead of unprecedented.
Watch the short clip from The View below:
BUSTED: the rich asshole administration ripped off Forbes to create its Russian ‘Oligarch List’
US President some rich asshole (right) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on November 11, 2017 (AFP Photo/JORGE SILVA)
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The Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday that they pulled their list of “Russian oligarchs” from Forbes‘ “200 richest businessmen in Russia 2017” report.
A spokesperson for the department confirmed the list’s source to BuzzFeed News after CNBC and other outlets noticed the Treasury Department’s list was “strikingly similar” to one from Forbes.
When a spokesperson from the department was asked by BuzzFeed if there is “any truth to the criticisms that the Treasury list was inspired or derived in some way from the Forbes list,” they responded, “yes.”
“The names of and net worth of oligarchs in the unclassified version of the report were selected based on objective criteria drawn from publicly available sources,” the spokesperson said of the 96-person list, nearly all of which were included on Forbes’ Russian businessmen list.
The release of the Treasury Department list was mandated by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a law passed last August that President Donald the rich asshole signed despite saying the legislation was “seriously flawed.” Its release coincided with the president’s decision not to impose further sanctions on Russia, a move for which he’s been widely criticized
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