Muckraker Farm

Keeping Track (of some things), Staying Outraged (it is possible), and Resisting (it’s essential)

Passages in bold in the body of the texts below are my emphasis. This is an ongoing project, and I update the site frequently. I hope readers will peruse the articles in full for a better understanding of the issues and their context; our democracy and our future depend on citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods and who are engaged in the political process.

Friday, 5 May 2017, Day 106:

Measure on Pre-existing Conditions Energizes Opposition to the Republican Health Bill, The New York Times, Alexander Burns and Abby Goodnough, Friday, 5 May 2017: “From the moment the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a plan to overhaul the health care system, an onslaught of opposition to the bill has been focused on a single, compact term: pre-existing conditions. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began running digital ads warning that the legislation would leave ‘no more protections’ for people with a history of illness or injury. Pointing to the power that states could have to set the terms for insurers under the G.O.P. bill, Democratic leaders announced they would make pre-existing conditions an issue in every gubernatorial and state legislative race in the country.” See also, Late-night hosts blast Republican health-care bill: ‘Those ramifications are disastrous,’ The Washington Post, Emily Yahr, Friday, 5 May 2017.

Senate Intelligence Committee Asks Trump Associates for Records of Communication With Russians, The New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman, Friday, 5 May 2017:”The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked a number of high-profile Trump campaign associates to hand over emails and other records of dealings with Russians as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election and is prepared to subpoena those who refuse to cooperate, officials said. The requests for the materials were made in letters sent by the committee in the past 10 days, said two officials with knowledge of the contents of the letters. The move is designed to accelerate the committee’s investigation, and represents a new bipartisan challenge to the Trump administration, which has sought to use Republican allies in Congress to blunt the inquiries. Among those who said they had received the requests were Roger J. Stone Jr., an informal adviser to President Trump, and Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, were also sent letters, the officials with knowledge of the investigation said. Representatives for those two men declined to comment. Any decision to issue subpoenas would require a majority vote by members of the intelligence committee.”

After promising to cooperate, ex-Trump adviser Carter Page turns the inquiry back on the Senate Intelligence Committee panel, The Washington Post, Rosalind S. Helderman, Friday, 5 May 2017: “Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser whose interactions with Russia are under FBI investigation, has repeatedly said he wants to cooperate with Congress’s Russia probes to clear his name. But in a letter this week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Page appeared to initially duck specific questions regarding his interactions with Russian officials, suggesting that the panel seek that information from inside the U.S. government instead. In an email to The Post, Page characterized the letter as a ‘preliminary response’ to a Senate request that he begin providing detailed information no later than May 9, leaving open the possibility he will release more information to the committee in coming days. But he titled the letter a response to  ‘request for even more irrelevant data’ and asked that the committee first release to him information the government has collected through surveillance ‘as a starting point.’ The FBI last summer obtained a secret court order to monitor Page’s communications after convincing a federal judge that there was probable cause to believe the energy consultant was acting as an agent of the Russian government. Page has angrily denied that allegation in a series of media interviews and public statements, insisting he is the victim of a smear campaign by Democrats.”

Continue reading Week 16, Friday, 5 May – Thursday, 11 May 2017:

Keeping Track (of some things), Staying Outraged (it is possible), and Resisting (it’s essential)

Passages in bold in the body of the texts below are my emphasis. This is an ongoing project, and I update the site frequently.

I hope readers will peruse the articles in full for a better understanding of the issues and their context; our democracy and our future depend on citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods and who are engaged in the political process.

Friday, 21 April 2017, Day 93:

Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 US presidential election, Reuters, Ned Parker, Jonathan Landay and John Walcott, Friday, 21 April 2017: “A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election. The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office. The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals. It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said. A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said. The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions takes step toward enforcing threat to strip funding from ‘sanctuary cities,’ The Washington Post, Matt Zapotosky, Friday, 21 April 2017: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday demanded that nine jurisdictions produce proof that they are communicating with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants or risk losing grant funding. Sessions sent letters to the nine jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, New York and Chicago, in the latest sign that the Trump administration intends to punish what are sometimes called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate in its promised crackdown on illegal immigration. President Trump signed an executive order in January declaring that sanctuary jurisdictions would not be eligible to receive federal grants, and Sessions vowed last month during a White House news conference to take Justice Department money from such places. How far Trump can go, though, and what jurisdictions can do to avoid his ire, remains unclear…. The letters were addressed to officials in New Orleans; Philadelphia; Chicago; New York City; Clark County, Nev.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Milwaukee County, Wis.; Cook County, Ill.; and the state of California…. The release said New York, for example, “continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance.” New York, in fact, has seen significant recent reductions in crime.… The grants at stake provide federal funding for a host of functions in the criminal-justice system — including policing, victim-and-witness initiatives, crime prevention, drug-treatment programs and technology improvements…. When someone is arrested on a local crime, their fingerprints are run through the FBI database, and — whether local authorities like it or not — ICE can tell if they are in the country illegally. It then often will send a request to local authorities to detain such people. Refusing to honor such a request would not necessarily violate federal law. But telling local police officers, for example, that they could not give information to their ICE counterparts might.”

U.S. Rejects Exxon Mobil Bid for Waiver on Russia Sanctions, The New York Times, Clifford Krauss, Friday, 21 April 2017: “The Trump administration delivered a setback to Exxon Mobil on Friday, announcing that it would not grant the oil giant a waiver from sanctions against Russia that would allow drilling in the Black Sea. The decision, reinforcing barriers erected by the United States over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, was another sign that President Trump has been unwilling or unable to improve relations with the Kremlin early in his term, after pledging as a candidate that he would seek a thaw. ‘In consultation with President Donald J. Trump,’ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a terse, prepared statement, ‘the Treasury Department will not be issuing waivers to U.S. companies, including Exxon, authorizing drilling prohibited by current Russian sanctions.’ The prospect of a waiver had drawn denunciations from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers…. The matter was complicated by the continuing congressional scrutiny of reports of Russian intervention in support of Mr. Trump in last year’s election, and by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s role as Exxon Mobil’s chief executive until the president nominated him for his current position.”

Continue reading Week 14, Friday, 21 April – Thursday, 27 April 2017:

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Keeping Track (of some things), Staying Outraged (it is possible), and Resisting (it’s essential)

Passages in bold in the body of the texts below are my emphasis. This is an ongoing project, and I update the site frequently. I hope readers will peruse the articles in full for a better understanding of the issues and their context; our democracy and our future depend on citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods and who are engaged in the political process.

Friday, 7 April 2017, Day 78:

Timeline of 63 Hours: From Chemical Attack to Trump’s Strike in Syria, The New York Times, Michael D. Shear and Michael R. Gordon, Friday, 7 April 2017: “The decision came Thursday afternoon on Air Force One on the way to Florida. President Trump assembled his National Security Council on his plane, some by secure video link, as the generals made the case that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had to learn there was a price to pay.”… Two hours later at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump gave the order to unleash 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Al Shayrat airfield in western Syria, where the chemical weapons attack originated. His generals had given him the option of delaying a day, but Mr. Trump chose not to wait. It had been only 63 hours from the chemical attack to the American strike.” See also, Who Was in the Room? these Advisers Joined Trump for the Syria Strike, The New York Times, David E. Sanger, Friday, 7 April 2017.

The media loved Trump’s show of military might in Syria. Are we really doing this again? The Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan, published on Saturday, 8 April 2017: “The cruise missiles struck, and many in the mainstream media fawned. ‘I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,’ declared Fareed Zakaria on CNN, after the firing of 59 missiles at a Syrian military airfield late Thursday night. (His words sounded familiar, since CNN’s Van Jones made a nearly identical pronouncement after Trump’s first address to Congress.) ‘On Syria attack, Trump’s heart came first,’ read a New York Times headline. ‘President Trump has done the right thing and I salute him for it,’ wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens — a frequent Trump critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist. He added: ‘Now destroy the Assad regime for good.’ Brian Williams, on MSNBC, seemed mesmerized by the images of the strikes provided by the Pentagon. He used the word ‘beautiful’ three times and alluded to a Leonard Cohen lyric — ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons’ — without apparent irony…. Why do so many in the news media love a show of force? ‘There is no faster way to bring public support than to pursue military action,’ said Ken Paulson, head of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center…. Clara Jeffery, editor in chief of Mother Jones, offered a simple explanation: ‘It’s dramatic. It’s good for TV, reporters get caught up in the moment, or, worse, jingoism.’… [E]mpathy as the president’s clear motivation is accepted, she said — ‘with no mention of the refugee ban keeping those kids out, no mention of Islamophobia that has informed his campaign and administration. How can you write about motive and not explore that hypocrisy?’… Groupthink, and a lack of proper skepticism, is something that we’ve seen many times before as the American news media watches an administration step to the brink of war.” See also, The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise for Bombing Syria, The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, Friday, 7 April 2017: “In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets.”

Russia Suspends Cooperation With U.S. in Syria After U.S. Missile Strikes, The New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar, Friday, 7 April 2017: “Russia on Friday froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington. Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as ‘a disgraceful act.’ In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defense systems, and was reported to be planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus…. A statement from the office of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said the American missile strikes, which President Trump said were a response to a chemical weapons attack in Idlib Province on Tuesday that left more than 80 people dead, was the result of ‘a false propaganda campaign.’ Syria has denied that it possesses chemical weapons, and Russia held to its view that Mr. Assad had not bombed his own people. The American attack left six people dead, according to the Syrian Army, and a military spokesman described the missile strikes as an act of ‘flagrant aggression.'”

Continue reading Week 12, Friday, 7 April – Thursday, 13 April 2017:

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Keeping Track (of some things), Staying Outraged (it is possible), and Resisting (it’s essential)

Passages in bold in the body of the texts below are my emphasis. This is an ongoing project, and I update the site frequently. I hope readers will peruse the articles in full for a better understanding of the issues and their context; our democracy and our future depend on citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods and who are engaged in the political process.

Friday, 24 March 2017, Day 64:

In Major Defeat for Trump, Push to Repeal Health Care Law Fails, The New York Times, Robert Pear, Glenn Thrush and Thomas Kaplan, Friday, 24 March 2017: “House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday afternoon in a significant defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan conceded, ‘We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.’ The defeat of the Republicans’ three-month blitz to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement exposed deep divisions in the Republican Party that the election of a Republican president could not mask. It also cast a shadow over the ambitious agenda that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders had promised to enact once their party assumed power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The drama of the day underscored the futility of the leaders’ efforts. Mr. Ryan rushed to the White House shortly after noon to tell Mr. Trump he did not have the votes for a repeal bill that had been promised for seven years — since the day Mr. Obama signed his landmark health care act into law. Mr. Trump, in a telephone interview moments after the bill was pulled, blamed Democrats and predicted that they would seek a deal within a year, he asserted, after ‘Obamacare explodes’ because of high premiums. He also expressed weariness with the fight, which was a fraction of the length of time that Democrats devoted to enacting the Affordable Care Act. ‘The best thing that could happen is exactly what happened — watch,’ he said. ‘It’s enough already.’ But the effort to win passage had been relentless — and hardly hidden. Vice President Mike Pence and Tom Price, the health secretary, rushed to Capitol Hill for a late appeal to House conservatives, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. And in private, Mr. Trump took a much harder line. The president was furious that members of the hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus had opposed the legislation. He demanded for much of Thursday that Mr. Ryan push a vote to publicly expose the members who were opposing the administration. Mr. Trump and his top strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, wanted to see a confidential list to exact revenge on the bill’s Republican opponents, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation…. In the end, Republican leaders doomed the bill by agreeing to eliminate federal standards for the minimum benefits that must be provided by certain health insurance policies. ‘This provision is so cartoonishly malicious that I can picture someone twirling their mustache as they drafted it in their secret capitol lair last night,’ said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. ‘This back-room deal will kill the requirement for insurance companies to offer essential health benefits such as emergency services, maternity care, mental health care, substance addiction treatment, pediatric services, prescription drugs and many other basic essential services.’ Defeat of the bill could be a catalyst if it forces Republicans and Democrats to work together to improve the Affordable Care Act, which virtually every member of Congress believes needs repair. Democrats have been saying for weeks that they want to work with Republicans on such changes, but first, they said, Republicans had to abandon their drive to repeal the law.”

In a Call to The Times, Trump Blames Democrats for the Failure of the Health Bill, The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, Friday, 24 March 2017: “Just moments after the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was declared dead, President Trump sought to paint the defeat of his first legislative effort as an early-term blip. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, was preparing to tell the public that the health care bill was being withdrawn — a byproduct, Mr. Trump said, of Democratic partisanship. The president predicted that Democrats would return to him to make a deal in roughly a year. ‘Look, we got no Democratic votes. We got none, zero,’ Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview he initiated with The New York Times. ‘The good news is they now own health care. They now own Obamacare.’ Mr. Trump insisted that the Affordable Care Act would collapse in the next year, which would then force Democrats to come to the bargaining table for a new bill…. In a later phone interview with The Times, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, ridiculed Mr. Trump’s remarks about Democrats being at fault. ‘Whenever the president gets in trouble, he points fingers of blame,’ Mr. Schumer said. ‘It’s about time he stopped doing that and started to lead. The Republicans were totally committed to repeal from the get-go, never talked to us once. But now that they realize that repeal can’t work, if they back off repeal, of course we’ll work with them to make it even better.’ Mr. Trump said that “when they come to make a deal,” he would be open and receptive. He singled out the Tuesday Group moderates for praise, calling them ‘terrific,’ an implicit jab at the House Freedom Caucus, which his aides had expressed frustration with during negotiations.”

The U.S. State Department, in Reversal, Issues Permit for Keystone XL Oil Pipeline, The New York Times, Clifford Krauss, Friday, 24 March 2017: “During his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump repeatedly hailed the Keystone XL pipeline as a vital jobs program and one that sharply contrasted his vision for the economy with that of Hillary Clinton. ‘Today we begin to make things right,’ President Trump said Friday morning shortly after the State Department granted the pipeline giant TransCanada a permit for Keystone construction, a reversal of Obama administration policy. The pipeline would link oil producers in Canada and North Dakota with refiners and export terminals on the Gulf Coast. It has long been an object of contention, with environmentalists saying it would contribute to climate change and the project’s proponents — Republicans, some labor unions and the oil industry — contending that it would help guarantee national energy security for decades to come. When President Barack Obama rejected the project in late 2015, he said it would undermine American leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels. The pipeline still faces hurdles before it can be built. It needs the approval of the Nebraska Public Service Commission and local landowners who are concerned about their water and land rights. Protests are likely since the project has become an important symbol for the environmental movement, with the Canadian oil sands among the most carbon-intensive oil supplies. Mining the oil sands requires vast amounts of energy for extraction and processing. In addition, interest among many oil companies in the oil sands is waning amid sluggish oil prices. Extraction from the oil sands, situated in the sub-Arctic boreal forest, is expensive. Statoil and Total, two European energy giants, have abandoned their production projects. In recent weeks, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sell most of its oil sands assets for $8.5 billion. And Exxon Mobil wrote down 3.5 billion barrels of reserves, conceding the oil sands were not economically attractive enough to develop for the next few years at least. Nevertheless, Canadian production continues to grow as projects that were conceived when prices were higher begin to operate. And the Keystone effort is central to the future of TransCanada, a major force in the Canadian oil patch.” See also, Keystone XL pipeline Opponents Renew Fight Against Pipeline After Trump Approves It, Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle, Friday, 24 March 2017.

Continue reading Week 10, Friday, 24 March – Thursday, 30 March 2017:

Keeping Track (of some things), Staying Outraged (it is possible), and Resisting (it’s essential)

Passages in bold in the body of the texts below are my emphasis. This is an ongoing project, and I update the site frequently. I hope readers will peruse the articles in full for a better understanding of the issues and their context; our democracy and our future depend on citizens who can distinguish between facts and falsehoods and who are engaged in the political process.

Friday, 10 March 2017, Day 50:

Trump Abruptly Orders 46 Obama-Era Prosecutors at the Department of Justice to Resign, The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, Friday, 10 March 2017: “The Trump administration moved on Friday to sweep away most of the remaining vestiges of Obama administration prosecutors at the Justice Department, ordering 46 holdover United States attorneys to tender their resignations immediately — including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. The firings were a surprise — especially for Mr. Bharara, who has a reputation for prosecuting public corruption cases and for investigating insider trading. In November, Mr. Bharara met with then President-elect Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan and told reporters afterward that both Mr. Trump and Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general, had asked him about staying on, which the prosecutor said he expected to do. But on Friday, Mr. Bharara was among federal prosecutors who received a call from Dana Boente, the acting deputy attorney general, instructing him to resign, according to a person familiar with the matter. As of Friday evening, though some of the prosecutors had publicly announced their resignations, Mr. Bharara had not. A spokesman for Mr. Bharara declined to comment…. The abrupt order came after two weeks of increasing calls from Mr. Trump’s allies outside the government to oust appointees from President Barack Obama’s administration….  [T]he calls from the acting deputy attorney general arose a day after Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator who is a strong supporter of President Trump, said on his evening show that Mr. Trump needed to ‘purge’ Obama holdovers from the federal government. Mr. Hannity portrayed them as ‘saboteurs’ from the ‘deep state’ who were leaking secrets to hurt Mr. Trump. It also came the same week that government watchdogs wrote to Mr. Bharara and urged him to investigate whether Mr. Trump had violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments…. It is not unusual for a new president to replace United States attorneys appointed by a predecessor, especially when there has been a change in which party controls the White House. Still, other presidents have done it gradually in order to minimize disruption, giving those asked to resign more time to make the transition while keeping some inherited prosecutors in place, as it had appeared Mr. Trump would do with Mr. Bharara.”

ACLU files ethics complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his testimony to a Senate committee that he had no communications with the Russian government, The Washington Post, Kristine Phillips, Friday, 10 March 2017: “The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his testimony to a Senate committee that he had no communications with the Russian government. The complaint, filed with the Alabama State Bar’s disciplinary commission, comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing in January. The March 1 report by The Post’s Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller intensified calls for a congressional investigation into Russia’s alleged involvement in the presidential election. Chris Anders, deputy director of the ACLU’s legislative office in Washington, claims that Sessions had violated Alabama’s rules of professional conduct preventing lawyers from engaging in ‘conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,’ according to the complaint, which cites The Post’s story…. The complaint, filed Thursday, says the report of the meetings with the Russian ambassador ‘does not square’ with Sessions’s sworn testimony in the Senate.”

Trump Supporters Have the Most to Lose in the Republican Health Care Plan, The New York Times, Nate Cohn, Friday, 10 March 2017: “The people who stand to lose the most in tax credits under the House Republican health plan tended to support Donald J. Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, according to a new Upshot analysis. Over all, voters who would be eligible for a tax credit that would be at least $1,000 smaller than the subsidy they’re eligible for under Obamacare supported Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton by a seven-point margin. The voters hit the hardest — eligible for at least $5,000 less in tax credits under the Republican plan — supported Mr. Trump by a margin of 59 percent to 36 percent. These estimates are based on data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (C.C.E.S.), a large survey of tens of thousands of Americans. Kaiser estimated whether individuals would gain or lose under the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, based on their income, age and insurance market.”

Continue reading Week 8, Friday, 10 March – Thursday, 16 March 2017:

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