Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross was sworn in as U.S. commerce secretary on Tuesday after helping shape Republican President Donald Trump's opposition to multilateral trade deals.

Vice President Mike Pence administered the oath of office to Ross, 79, a day after the U.S. Senate voted to confirm the corporate turnaround expert's nomination, with strong support from Democrats.

While commerce secretaries rarely take the spotlight in Washington, Ross is expected to play an outsize role in pursuing Trump's campaign pledge to slash U.S. trade deficits and bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

Some Democrats criticized Ross as another billionaire in a Trump Cabinet that says it is focused on the working class and for being a "vulture" investor who has eliminated some jobs. Reuters reported last month that Ross's companies had shipped some 2,700 jobs overseas since 2004.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-commerce-idUSKBN1671XC?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/836562121114660864

When asked about criticism from Owens’s father about the failed raid, Trump pointed out that planning for the mission actually started under former President Obama.

“This was a mission that was started before I got here,” Trump said. “This was something that was, uh, you know, they wanted to do. They came to see me, they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected. My generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”

Trump went on to say that he could understand why Owens’s father would not want to meet with them since there is “nothing worse” than losing a son. All the same, the president believes that the mission was worth it, as he claims Defense Secretary James Mattis told him it was a very successful operation.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/they-lost-ryan-trump-blames-his-own-generals-for-yemen-raid-that-killed-navy-seal/

Trump will continue his losing streak if he keeps Bannon at his side, WSJ says in blistering editorial



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-will-continue-his-losing-streak-if-he-keeps-bannon-at-his-side-wsj-says-in-blistering-editorial/

In a blistering editorial from the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Bannon and his protégé Stephen Miller are described as the architects behind the strategy of polarization being seen in Trump’s White House. The editorial board goes on to blame Bannon and Miller for Trump’s “biggest mistakes of the first five weeks,” namely the immigration executive order, constant flubs over Trump’s Russian ties and General Michael Flynn.

The Journal explained that Bannon will never be capable of producing the results that he and Trump are promising. In the end, Bannon may even undermine Trump’s entire agenda. They rejected the Trump declaration that tariffs will reduce trade and ultimately slow growth. Similarly, they knocked Trump’s overly severe immigration laws that will ultimately cause a significant labor shortage and force companies to move elsewhere.

Trump’s Bannon-Miller policies are also prompting Republicans to distance themselves and according to The Journal, prompted senators to abandon his Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder. Even bruised Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to announce his support for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump, his White House and his campaign for ties to Russia.

However, The Journal proclaimed Trump’s political future will ultimately live and die by the conservative Republican establishment that Bannon has spent his political career fighting. Trump’s own progress will come not from the determination to return to conservative values but from the successes or failures of the economic prosperity he swears is imminent under his leadership. Trump must also meet the promises he made to his base like repealing and replacing Obamacare, passing a substantial tax cut and breaking ground on his “big, beautiful, wall.”

Trump's Deportation Plans Will Turn Cops Into Immigration Agents
"This is the deportation machine."

BRYAN SCHATZFEB. 28, 2017 6:00 AM



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/donald-trump-deportation-police-program

Donald Trump is quickly amassing the means to make good on his promise to deport millions of people from the United States. One of those tools is a federal program that enlists state and local cops and jail officials to identify people they believe may be undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration scaled down the program, in part due to criticism that it encouraged racial and ethnic profiling, created financial incentives to detain immigrants, and undermined relations between the police and immigrant communities. Now Trump is preparing to bring it back.

The program is known as 287(g) for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 that created it. It established "task force" agreements that allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deputize local and state law enforcement officers as immigration agents. The program gives these law enforcement officers the authority to stop, interrogate, and arrest anyone they believe to be unauthorized immigrants. It also gives deputized jail administrators access to immigration databases so they may refer undocumented immigrants to ICE for possible deportation. The 287(g) program enabled more than 175,000 deportations between 2006 and 2013, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project.

Last Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued memos to senior officials in his department outlining instructions for enforcing the president's January 25 executive order, which called for an aggressive effort to deport undocumented immigrants regardless of whether they had committed serious crimes. Referring to 287(g), Kelly called the program a highly effective "force multiplier" that has led to the identification of more than 400,000 "removable aliens" between 2006 and 2015, and he directed ICE to "engage immediately with all willing and qualified law enforcement jurisdictions" that may cooperate with the federal government under 287(g).

"This is the deportation machine," says Daniel Stageman, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies immigration and criminal justice. "If Trump is going to meet the kinds of numbers he announced during his campaign, this is how it will happen." Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, puts it in stark terms: "There's potential for this to be an enormous driver of people coming into the system through the task forces and people being processed in the jails. 175,000 is a staggering number of people to have gone through this, but that may be only a small fraction of what's intended now."

GOP frontrunner in Louisiana House race caught posing in racist Tiger Woods blackface costume



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/gop-frontrunner-in-louisiana-house-race-caught-posing-in-racist-tiger-woods-blackface-costume/

Robbie Gatti, the frontrunner candidate in the 8th District race is seen in the photo with his face and neck completely covered in black paint. The photo was revealed by a conservative Louisiana politics outlet, The Hayride.

The source who provided the photo to the outlet said the photo was taken when Gatti was with members of the First Baptist Church in Bossier City. Gatti used to be an associate pastor at the church but was asked to leave.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Gatti confirmed the photo was real, though he did not issue a formal apology. He wrote, “15 years ago, my church held a fall festival, where all the volunteers were told to dress as a famous person. Tiger Woods was at the height of his popularity, as a world champion, and that was who I was dressed as.”

Gatti added, “I’m sad that my opponents have taken a good night at church and turned it into negative, political mud, but I’m confident the voters of Bossier will not fall for their desperate attacks.”

Sean Spicer bails on Ohio Republican’s fundraiser after learning lawmaker criticized Trump for groping women



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/sean-spicer-bails-on-ohio-republicans-fundraiser-after-learning-lawmaker-criticized-trump-for-groping-women/

According to Politico, the very high profile Spicer was slated to attend a Capitol Hill fundraiser benefiting Ohio Republican Frank LaRose, where attendees would get an opportunity to hobnob with the press secretary and the Ohio Republican in return for a contribution of up to $1,000.

However, Spicer has now cancelled after it was brought to the attention of the press office that LaRose was critical of Trump in the run-up to the election.

In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal last October, LaRose said he was the father of three daughters and that he didn’t appreciate Trump’s boasting about sexually assaulting women.

“What’s come to light in the last couple days is disgusting and appalling, particularly as a father of three little girls,” said LaRose. “I find it abhorrent.”

Jeff Sessions Issues Ominous Warning On State Marijuana Legalization



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-marijuana-comments_us_58b4b189e4b0780bac2c9fd8?39tmpw1r0qthloko6r&


“I don’t think America is going to be a better place when people of all ages, and particularly young people, are smoking pot,” Sessions said to reporters Monday at the Department of Justice. “I believe it’s an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we’re seeing real violence around that.”

Sessions said he had a meeting on Monday with the attorney general of Nebraska, who is very concerned about marijuana flowing in from Colorado, which legalized weed in 2012. “Experts are telling me there’s more violence around marijuana than one would think and there’s big money involved,” he said.

“You can’t sue somebody for drug debt; the only way to get your money is through strong-arm tactics, and violence tends to follow that,” Sessions said.

“States, they can pass the laws they choose,” he added. “I would just say it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not.”