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Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html

Ocasio-Cortez reportedly in line for Banking Committee post

Big banks could be about to get a high-profile enemy in a very powerful place.

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a registered Democrat but identifies as a democratic socialist, is in line to be appointed to the House Financial Services Committee, according to a Politico report.

The New York legislator has vowed to take on the industry that makes up the corporate backbone for much of her constituency. She said during her successful campaign in 2018, in which she refused corporate donors and upset entrenched incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley, that she was hoping for an assignment that would allow her to take on big finance.

“I think with our district, we can be ambitious, so we’re kind of swinging for the fences on committees,” Ocasio-Cortez told Hill.tv in an interview after her win. “We might as well ask for something big.”



https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/11/ocasio-cortez-in-line-for-banking-post-and-that-could-be-bad-news-for-wall-street.html

Tulsi Gabbard "conflicted" over the CIA's use of torture.

Nancy appoints House freshmen to prestigious Armed Services Committee.

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Trump serves a fast food "dinner" to the visiting Clemson University Tigers

New Order - Your Silent Face (VIDEO)

Tulsi Gabbard once touted working for anti-gay group that backed conversion therapy

During her run for state legislature in 2002, Gabbard told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, "Working with my father, Mike Gabbard, and others to pass a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage, I learned that real leaders are willing to make personal sacrifices for the common good. I will bring that attitude of public service to the legislature." The quote, which CNN's KFile found during a review of Gabbard's early career, shows how closely she aligned herself with her father's mission at the time.

Gabbard's father ran The Alliance for Traditional Marriage, a political action committee aimed at opposing pro-gay lawmakers and legislation that organized and spent more than $100,000 to pass an amendment in 1998 that gave the Hawaii state legislature power to "reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples." The amendment to the state's constitution passed.

Gabbard was 17 at the time of the vote and cited working with her father and the organization during her run for the state legislature in Hawaii four years later when she was age 21. Gabbard would win her race, becoming the youngest woman elected to the Hawaii state legislature.

Gabbard's father Mike was a prominent anti-gay activist in Hawaii. He was also the director of Stop Promoting Homosexuality and also served on the steering committees of the National Campaign to Protect Marriage and the Hawaii-based coalition, Save Traditional Marriage. He also once hosted an anti-gay radio show, Let's Talk Straight Hawaii.....

A CNN KFile review of the organization's website, which is archived on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, uncovers the organization supported controversial gay conversion therapy, which treats homosexuality as a mental illness that can be fixed. The practice is opposed by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association and has been banned for use on minors in 14 states and D.C., including Hawaii in 2018....

Tulsi Gabbard's anti-gay efforts continued after she became a state representative.

Shortly after Gabbard announced her presidential ambitions Friday, her testimony at a hearing opposing a civil unions bill in 2004 resurfaced.

"To try to act as if there is a difference between 'civil unions' and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii," Gabbard said at the time. "As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists."




https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/13/politics/kfile-tulsi-gabbard-lgbt/index.html

Kremlin Blessed Russia's NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says

The Kremlin has long denied that it had anything to do with the infiltration of the NRA and the broader American conservative movement. A U.S. intelligence report reviewed by The Daily Beast tells a different story.

Alexander Torshin, the Russian central bank official who spent years aggressively courting NRA leaders, briefed the Kremlin on his efforts and recommended they participate, according to the report. Its existence and contents have not previously been reported.

While there has been speculation that Torshin and his protege, Maria Butina, had the Kremlin’s blessing to woo the NRA—and federal prosecutors have vaguely asserted that she acted “on behalf of the Russian federation”—no one in the White House or the U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated as much. Senior Russian government officials, for their part, have strenuously distanced themselves from Butina’s courtship of the NRA, which she did at Torshin’s direction.

The report, on the other hand, notes that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was fine with Torshin’s courtship of the NRA because the relationships would be valuable if a Republican won the White House in 2016.

“This reporting indicates that Alexander Torshin was working with the blessing of the Kremlin, at a minimum,” one European intelligence official told The Daily Beast. The official added that this reporting is consistent with his group’s understanding of how the Kremlin operates.



https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-blessed-russias-nra-operation-us-intel-report-says