DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalUnited Nations: Climate action is unstoppable
Source: The Hill
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 05/31/17 10:53 AM EDT
The United Nations (U.N.) tweeted on Wednesday that climate change is “unstoppable” amid several reports that President Trump will pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.
-snip-
https://twitter.com/UN/status/869896305891577856
The tweet highlights U.N. Secretary General António Guterres's speech on Tuesday at an event in New York.
“It’s very clear that governments are not everything," the U.N. chief said. "On the other hand, we are doing our best, in dialogue with the administration and with Congress, to make the U.S. understand that funding the development aid, funding foreign policy in general, funding organizations like the U.N., is also in the interest of the American people."
Trump tweeted on Wednesday he will make his decision about the Paris climate accords “over the next few days.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/869903459511918592
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/335762-united-nations-climate-action-is-unstoppable
Trump's impatience with GOP grows
Source: The Hill
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 05/31/17 06:00 AM EDT
An impatient President Trump is putting new pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to get rid of the filibuster in order to speed progress on legislation repealing ObamaCare and reforming the tax code.
In a message posted Tuesday on Twitter, Trump urged Republican senators to invoke the so-called nuclear option and “switch to 51 votes, immediately, and get Healthcare and TAX CUTS approved, fast and easy.” Trump also suggested his party wasn’t as cutthroat as Democrats when it comes to passing legislation, writing, “Dems would do it, no doubt!”
It’s just Trump’s latest attempt to press McConnell to eliminate the power to filibuster legislation, something Republican lawmakers firmly rejected when the president floated the idea only a few weeks ago.
That he used Twitter to do so was no surprise — but may have irritated McConnell, who has urged the president to rethink his use of social media.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/335715-trumps-impatience-with-gop-grows
Touting Ties to Trump Is the Only Thing That Unites the Feuding Kushners
David Kocieniewski, Wenxin Fan and David M. Levitt
May 31, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT
Charles and Murray Kushner have been called the Cain and Abel of New Jersey real estate, feuding publicly for more than a decade through competing property empires. One thing now unites the brothers: Both have had projects promoted to Chinese investors by playing the White House card.
Charles is the father of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. His prolonged quarrel with Murray has sparked fraud allegations, newspaper comparisons to biblical fury, lawsuits and a revenge plot that landed Charles in prison.
Yet early this month, a Jersey City apartment project being developed by Murray’s company, the KRE Group, was pitched to investors in China with a promotion that includes images of Jared, his wife Ivanka Trump and the president.
“Work hand-in-hand with Trump son-in-law Kushner,” said the pitch, which hasn’t previously been reported. It told the investors that by putting $500,000 in the planned apartment tower at 235 Grand Street, they could qualify for a U.S. resident visa through a program known as EB-5, aimed at attracting foreign funds to help develop neglected areas and promote jobs.
more
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-31/kushners-feud-as-rival-clan-members-use-white-house-trump-link
How Trump Gave the Supreme Court a Second Chance on Japanese Internment
The president’s travel ban gives Anthony Kennedy an opening to right a historical wrong.
By RICHARD PRIMUS May 30, 2017
What will the Supreme Court do when President Trump’s travel-ban order finally comes before it? The most likely outcome is for the Court to declare the ban unconstitutional. The reasons why are straightforward, and last week’s ruling by the Fourth Circuit lays them out pretty clearly. In brief, the executive order was motivated by a purpose to discriminate against Muslims, and courts don’t have to pretend not to know what the motivation was. The order’s discrimination on the basis of religion violates the First Amendment, and even the president’s broad discretion on immigration policy does not authorize him to get away with discriminatory action merely by lying about his motives.
To be sure, a handful of dissenting judges and a larger number of commentators have disputed parts of this logic. But a large majority of judges—including Republican as well as Democratic appointees—have seen the order as unconstitutional for the reasons given above. The administration’s only hope of vindication before the highest court, therefore, is the possibility that the justices will prove considerably more lenient toward the order than their lower-court colleagues have been. That happens sometimes. But it seems unlikely to happen here, and not just because the best reading of existing case law points toward the order’s unconstitutionality.
Here’s one of the other reasons: The administration cannot win this case without Justice Anthony Kennedy. And Justice Kennedy could well see in this case an opportunity to do one of the things that he most loves to do, which is to intervene in the grand sweep of constitutional history by repudiating ugly decisions from the Court’s unfortunate past. In particular, the travel-ban case offers Kennedy the chance to overrule a widely reviled decision that has never been officially overruled: Korematsu v. United States.
In Korematsu, decided in 1944, the Court upheld a military order, supported in turn by an executive order, banning all persons of Japanese descent from large areas of America’s West Coast. Many of the people forced to leave their homes were sent to internment camps farther inland. The Court’s role in that chapter of American history has been a mark of shame on the institution for the better part of a century. And although the Japanese internment and the Trump administration’s travel ban are different in several important ways—discriminatorily refusing entry to aliens is not morally equivalent to discriminatorily imprisoning America’s own citizens—the constitutional issues surrounding the travel ban easily evoke central issues of Korematsu.
more
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/30/donald-trump-korematsu-japanese-internment-supreme-court-215208
Who wants to sign up for crazy?: Trump looks to GOP establishment but they want no part of him
TRAVIS GETTYS
31 MAY 2017 AT 09:14 ET
President Donald Trump is finally realizing he needs some establishment Republican types to bring stability to his administration — but he’s not finding many takers.
The president is reportedly considering a number of staffing changes after his legislative agenda stalled and his administration drowns in the Russia scandal, but experienced Washington hands are reluctant to sign on, reported The Hill.
Trump rejected many GOP veterans for White House jobs because they had criticized him during the campaign or felt they had been insufficiently supportive, but few reputable Republicans want to sign on with the president after seeing the chaotic first months of his administration.
“The talent pool is shrinking, because who wants to sign up for crazy?” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Nobody wants to step into a situation where you’re flying by the seat of your pants and don’t know whether what you just said will hold up from one news cycle to the next,” he added. “Nobody is going to be lining up for positions with that much uncertainty.”
more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/who-wants-to-sign-up-for-crazy-trump-looks-to-gop-establishment-but-they-want-no-part-of-him/
Not enough covfefe in the world to make this funny: Internet reacts in horror to Paris climate...
‘Not enough covfefe in the world to make this funny’: Internet reacts in horror to Paris climate withdrawal
TRAVIS GETTYS
31 MAY 2017 AT 08:27 ET
President Donald Trump is making good on his threat to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the president’s decision said a small team of administration officials, including Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, are working out details of how the withdrawal will be accomplished, reported Axios.
Those officials are deciding whether to initiate a full, formal withdrawal, which could take three years, or exit the underlying United Nations climate change treaty — which would be both quicker and more extreme.
Although the decision was expected, social media users swiftly recoiled in horror.
https://twitter.com/teri_atthepaper/status/869880583215886336
https://twitter.com/colombiadocs/status/869886686859337728
https://twitter.com/heymikemayo/status/869887729219383296
https://twitter.com/JoshuaHol/status/869888072103735296
https://twitter.com/Limerick1914/status/869887803781505024
more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/not-enough-covfefe-in-the-world-to-make-this-funny-internet-reacts-in-horror-to-paris-climate-withdrawal/
'We wish you were stable enough': Morning Joe says Trump is too 'erratic' for Twitter typo to be...
‘We wish you were stable enough’: Morning Joe says Trump is too ‘erratic’ for Twitter typo to be funny
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/we-wish-you-were-stable-enough-morning-joe-says-trump-is-too-erratic-for-twitter-typo-to-be-funny/
Jeffrey Lord: 'Jared Kushner Is the Robert Kennedy of the Trump Administration'
by Colin Kalmbacher | 9:35 pm, May 30th, 2017
Hold on to your historical allusions.
On tonight’s Anderson Cooper 360, the panel discussion focused on the still-unfolding story regarding an alleged backchannel with Russia sought by Jared Kushner on behalf of the Trump transition team.
Opining as to why Donald Trump‘s White House has seemingly had some trouble getting their story straight on the Kushner-Russia issue,
The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza said:
<“You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the Clinton White House in the ’90s. When anything related to Hillary Clinton–those senior White House aides would walk on eggshells. And it was very difficult for them to go to the president’s wife and say ‘Hey, there is troubling reporting in the press. We need all the facts.’ There was this very tense relationship because it was the family member of the president. Kushner for some reason, anything that comes up that’s related to Kushner, it just seems like the senior White House staff is scared, doesn’t want to talk to him, doesn’t want to pressure him.”>
The titular host then threw it back to CNN’s stalwart Trump surrogate Jeffrey Lord. When asked what he made of the situation, Lord did not disappoint. He responded:
<“I would say that Jared Kushner is the Robert Kennedy of the Trump Administration. And I would disagree…about backchannels and secret channels because they can be the same thing. In the Kennedy era, quite specifically, the knowledge of this was limited to the two brothers. One was the president. One was the attorney general. They kept it out of the state Department–they kept everything away from everybody.”>
###
Video & article here:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jeffrey-lord-jared-kushner-is-the-robert-kennedy-of-the-trump-administration/
'Governments Must Lead': U.S. Corporations Beg Trump to Stay in Paris Agreement in Full Page NYT Ad
Source: Mediaite
by Jon Levine | 7:17 am, May 31st, 2017
Some of the biggest names in U.S. business are making their voices heard in the debate over whether the United States should stay in the Paris Climate Agreement. The 195 nation treaty from 2015 was one of the Obama administration’s most significant second term achievements.
In a recent full page ad which ran in the New York Times and other major newspapers, Adobe, Apple, Google, Morgan Stanley, Salesforce, Microsoft, PG&E and numerous others beseeched President Trump not to withdraw from the agreement.
“As businesses concerned with the well-being of our customers, our investors, our communities, and our suppliers, we are strengthening our climate resilience, and we are investing in innovative technologies that can help achieve a clean energy transition,” they wrote. “For this transition to succeed, however, governments must lead as well.”
The ad went on to mention “strengthening competitiveness,” creating jobs, markets, and growth,” and “reducing business risks” as the key reasons the United States should stay in the agreement.
Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/governments-must-lead-u-s-corporations-beg-trump-to-stay-in-paris-agreement-in-full-page-nyt-ad/
Trump Aides 'Dreading' a Return of 'Trainwreck' Corey Lewandowski
Current White House staff predict Corey Lewandowski would make a hellish work environment worse.
LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
05.30.17 5:30 PM ET
As the White House struggles to maintain message discipline with a compulsive tweeter in the Oval Office, whispers of Corey Lewandowski’s reemergence have senior Trump administration officials gnashing their teeth.
"It would be another trainwreck," one White House official told The Daily Beast, bluntly. "I'm dreading that it could even happen…though he'll probably be kept outside [the White House], it's looking like."
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has been strongly considering signing on campaign aides David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski as war-room “crisis managers” to assist in grappling with the Russia-related fallout and mounting scandals. The president has discussed either placing the two Republican operatives at an outside, allied entity, or within the West Wing itself.
Lewandowski—Trump’s combative one-time campaign manager and chief enabler who was fired from the campaign after bruising a female reporter—is expected to amplify and encourage, not curtail, the president’s more aggressive and uncouth instincts, if he lands a White House gig. He would “only add to the toxicity of the White House,” predicted a senior administration official and former Trump campaign aide.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/30/trump-aides-dreading-a-return-of-trainwreck-corey-lewandowski
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
