October 3, 2017

Trump faces political danger in visit to Puerto Rico

After tweeting against local officials, and as islanders continue to suffer, the president could get less than a warm welcome.

By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM 10/03/2017 05:03 AM EDT Updated 10/03/2017 05:00 AM EDT

President Donald Trump on Tuesday will come face to face with the “politically motivated ingrates” he slammed on Twitter just days before.

The president will land in Puerto Rico after spending much of the past week boasting about a wildly successful response effort that hasn’t matched the reality of the hurricane-ravaged island and after picking a fight over the weekend with the San Juan mayor.

The visit comes as he’s also attempting to be soother-in-chief for the nation after a shooting in Las Vegas left at least 59 dead on Sunday night — the first time he’s had to navigate two disasters of national scope that are politically perilous for any president, but especially one prone to off-the-cuff riffs.

The Puerto Rico stop will mark only the start of emotionally charged travels for Trump this week. On Wednesday, he is scheduled to travel to Las Vegas to meet with the families of victims of Sunday’s massacre.

Trump struck a somber tone in his first public comments on the deaths in Las Vegas, decrying the “act of pure evil” and calling for unity. On Tuesday, though, he will trade the scripted and controlled setting of the East Room for a storm-ravaged island where more than half of the residents remain without access to drinking water and only 5 percent of the island has electricity.

more
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/trump-puerto-rico-hurricane-visit-243382

October 3, 2017

Senate Judiciary leaders denied access to CIA material on Russian meddling

By ELANA SCHOR 10/02/2017 07:11 PM EDT

The CIA has denied a request by the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee to let them view some of the same information about Russian meddling that the intelligence committee has already seen, according to the panel’s top Democrat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had asked CIA Director Mike Pompeo last week for access to certain unspecified material related to their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — information that the Senate Intelligence Committee has already received, a sign that turf battles between the two panels may be heating up. Feinstein told reporters Monday evening, however, that she and Grassley were unsuccessful.

“We were turned down,” she said, adding that the CIA’s decision was a disappointment. But Feinstein, who has described the material at issue as pertaining to obstruction-of-justice matters that lie in the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction, declined to comment further about longer-term access. “The issue isn’t finished,” she said.

As the Senate intelligence panel’s investigation of Moscow's electoral meddling homes in on Russian-linked ads purchased on Twitter and Facebook, Judiciary committee members are also signaling their interest in probing the role that social media companies may have played in amplifying the alleged foreign influence campaign.

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/02/cia-russia-senate-judiciary-243384

October 2, 2017

Trump administration announces support for 20-week abortion ban House is set to consider this week

Source: RawStory



ELIZABETH PREZA
02 OCT 2017 AT 17:57 ET

Donald Trump’s administration on Monday expressed its “strong support” for a 20-week abortion ban currently being considered by the House of Representatives, according to a statement issued by the Office of Management and Budget.

In a statement, the OMB indicated it “applauds” the effort “to secure critical pro-life protection” by making “it unlawful for any person to perform, or attempt to perform an abortion of an unborn child after 20 weeks,” or roughly five months of gestation. “The bill would promote a science-based approach to unborn life,” the statement claims.

As Planned Parenthood notes, as many as 99 percent of abortions take place before 21 weeks, but the Supreme Court guarantees access to abortion until fetal viability, which typically occurs around 24 weeks.

Read the full statement below:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/914969558456389632


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Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/trump-administration-announces-support-for-20-week-abortion-ban-house-is-set-to-consider-this-week/

October 2, 2017

Facebook: About 10 Million People Saw Ads Purchased By Russian Firm

Source: Talking Points Memo




By ESME CRIBB Published OCTOBER 2, 2017 6:47 PM

Facebook on Monday said an “estimated 10 million people” saw advertisements a Kremlin-linked Russian troll firm bought on the website over the course of the 2016 campaign.

“An estimated 10 million people saw the ads. We were able to approximate the number of unique people (“reach”) who saw at least one of these ads, with our best modeling,” Elliot Schrage, vice president of policy and communications, said in a blog post.

Schrage said that 44 percent of the ads “were seen before the US election” in November, while 56 percent were seen afterward.

“Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone,” Schrage said. “That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.”

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/facebook-ten-million-people-saw-ads-russian-firm-bought

October 2, 2017

Alex Jones Says 'Deep State' Carried Out Las Vegas Massacre. Even His Staff Won't Go Along With It.

Jones called the attack a leftist plot to provoke a civil war, but his fellow Infowars hosts aren't eager to invent conspiracies out of the deadliest shooting in American history.

LLOYD GROVE
10.02.17 3:34 PM ET

Emerging from the conspiracy-theory fever swamps Monday to exploit the massacre in Las Vegas, Donald Trump’s favorite radio personality, Alex Jones, blamed Sunday night’s mass shooting on an unholy alliance of Muslims, Bolsheviks and “Deep-State Democrats”—with a cameo appearance by O.J. Simpson.

“It’s the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, and the literal grandchildren of the folks that financed the Bolshevik revolution out of New York and London are now bragging and saying ‘Bolshevik Two’ is launching,” the InfoWars founder told his 3 million-odd fans (who include the president of the United States). “On Saturday night-Sunday morning, they released O.J., just 20 hours before the attack took place, so all the media would come and be in place to cover this event.”

Jones, who spent much of the morning doing live video feeds spinning out his pernicious Vegas theories from his car on the highway and strutting through InfoWars’ headquarters in Austin, continued.

“The whole thing has the hallmarks of being scripted by Deep-State Democrats and their Islamic allies using mental-patient cutouts,” he said. The 43-year-old Jones—with whom Trump has appeared on the radio, praised for his “amazing reputation” and personally thanked for his support and “standing up for what’s right” after his Electoral College victory last November—was, by far, the most rabid of the right-wing conspiracy mongers.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alex-jones-says-deep-state-carried-out-vegas-massacre-even-his-staff-wont-go-along-with-it

October 2, 2017

Russian Facebook ads showed a black woman firing a rifle, amid efforts to stoke racial strife

Source: The Washington Post




By Adam Entous, Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin October 2 at 1:44 PM

One of the Russian-bought advertisements that Facebook shared with congressional investigators on Monday featured photographs of an armed black woman “dry firing” a rifle — pulling the trigger of the weapon without a bullet in the chamber, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Investigators believe the advertisement may have been designed to encourage African American militancy and, at the same time, to stoke fears within white communities, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the probe. But the precise purpose of the ad remains unclear to investigators, the people said.

The apparent tactic underscores how the Russians used U.S.-based technology platforms to target Americans with highly tailored and sometimes-contradictory messages to exploit divisions in American society over the past two years.

The ad was among more than 3,000 Facebook ads delivered to congressional investigators that the company says were bought by 470 accounts and pages controlled by a Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-facebook-ads-showed-a-black-woman-firing-a-rifle-amid-efforts-to-stoke-racial-strife/2017/10/02/e4e78312-a785-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html

October 2, 2017

Puerto Rican Troops Waited a Week Without Orders While Residents Cried for Help

Source: The Daily Beast




Twenty-eight reservists reported to an abandoned naval station a week ago. They couldn’t do their mission until FEMA and the rest of the military got here.

INGRID ARNESEN
10.01.17 10:30 AM ET

ROOSEVELT ROADS NAVAL STATION, Puerto Rico—Twenty-eight U.S. Army reservists answered the call of duty, left their families behind, and reported to an abandoned base on the eastern tip of the island.

Then they waited for orders. And waited.

It was one week before the soldiers heard from the outside world. That is how desperate, how disorganized, the situation in Puerto Rico has been. Try as he may to deflect blame for the response to Hurricane Maria, President Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief of these soldiers who were marooned while their countrymen needed all the help they could get.

On September 21, the day after Hurricane Maria crashed into the island and knocked out virtually 100 percent of its electricity, the call to mobilize Puerto Rico’s reservists and National Guard went out over AM and FM radio. There was no other way to reach them.“For those who weren’t tuned in, the order was relayed by word of mouth,” Sgt. Daniel Navedo of the Puerto National Guard said. “We were told to go to Fort Buchanan, the U.S. military base in San Juan, or to our closest unit.”

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/puerto-rican-troops-are-still-waiting-for-orders-while-residents-cry-for-help

October 2, 2017

Robert Mueller has no comment

The special counsel avoids the public eye and swears others to secrecy — even as Trump allies accuse him of leaking.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/02/2017 05:01 AM EDT

Robert Mueller is rarely seen and almost never heard. He doesn’t frequent popular restaurants, appear on television or even issue statements. When he meets in person with President Donald Trump’s lawyers, he does not visit the White House where reporters might notice. He instead summons them to the conference rooms of his southwest Washington D.C. office, whose specific location is among his many well-guarded secrets.

In those meetings and others, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election strictly limits the number of outsiders who can attend. Militant about leaks, the former FBI director swears participants to a secrecy that they have honored to a remarkable degree. Reporters have long considered him among Washington’s toughest nuts to crack: “You’d be embarrassed to ask Bob Mueller for a leak,” said the veteran journalist Steven Brill, who has written extensively about media coverage of special counsels. “It’d be like asking him to watch a porn movie with you.”

Occasionally a savvy Washingtonian scores a chance sighting. When public relations professional Eddie Gonzalez saw the Russia investigator walking alone near Capitol Hill on a mid-September weekday afternoon, he suppressed an instinct to chase Mueller down for a selfie, he said. But a hotel restaurant worker did score a picture with him this spring, which her son posted on Twitter. Mueller grinned for that photo, slightly. But when a CNN crew chased him down a Senate hallway in June — “The president thinks it’s a ‘witch hunt.’ Is there any way you can respond to that?” — the poker-faced G-man just stared ahead and kept walking.

The moment illustrated the strange dynamic of Mueller’s mission. He is leading a highly secretive investigation into a president who publicly criticizes the probe on a regular basis. It also underscored what former colleagues, fellow prosecutors and people close to the investigation call Mueller’s calculated effort, in the face of a president who has contemplated his firing, to make himself as small a part of the story as possible.

more
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/02/robert-mueller-russia-probe-secret-243345

October 2, 2017

Jared and Ivanka Shrink Roles to Shield Themselves

October 2, 2017 at 7:04 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Mike Allen: “With increasing legal and practical questions about their presence in the West Wing, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are trying to remain viable by shrinking their purview and making more of an effort to ‘stay in their lane,’ associates tell us.”

“Both see themselves as under constant attack, as a way to get at the president.”

“In the chaotic early days of the administration, ‘Javanka’ — as Steve Bannon derisively called them — were involved in almost everything, from personnel to presidential statements. But now — with the departures of Bannon and Reince Priebus, and the stricter processes put in place by the new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly — colleagues say they are sticking more closely to their formal portfolios.”


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https://politicalwire.com/2017/10/02/jared-ivanka-shrink-roles-shield/

October 2, 2017

Nate Silver: Trump Only Hurts Himself When He Tweets

October 2, 2017 at 8:25 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Nate Silver finds that when President Trump stays away from Twitter, his approval rate ticks upward.

“If Trump never tweeted again, his approval rating would gradually rise to about 43 percent, the simulation estimates. Conversely, if he went on a Twitter bender and constantly tweeted at his maximum outrage level … it would eventually fall to 33 percent. Again, I wouldn’t take any of this too seriously. But Trump’s tweets often dictate news cycles and amplify controversies — and they can even help to spark diplomatic crises and put the president in legal jeopardy. It’s not crazy to think the tweets have had consequences — mostly negative ones — for Trump’s popularity.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/10/02/trump-hurts-tweets/