The majority of Americans don’t want to shut down the government over funding for Trump’s border wall, and they overwhelmingly say Trump should compromise rather than force a shutdown.
Simply put, Americans don’t want the Trump Shutdown:
Morning Consult poll: A majority of voters say that increased wall funding is not worth a government shutdown, while only 31% say it’s worth it.
NPR/PBS/Marist poll: Americans say 57 to 36% that Trump should compromise on the wall rather than cause a shutdown.
Earlier this morning, President Trump nominated William Barr to be his next attorney general. Barr previously served in that same role under George H.W. Bush.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that Barr’s past experience means he’ll be an adult in the room and provide a check on Trump. Barr has already made outrageous public statements that show he is entirely in line with Trump’s way of thinking.
Although Barr might not have as tawdry or shady a past as acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, he’s just as committed to baselessly accusing Hillary Clinton of crimes while blithely dismissing any of Trump’s wrongdoings.
View the complete December 7 article by Lisa Needham on the ShareBlue.com website here.
Ellis Ivory, a retired Utah homebuilder and second cousin of anti-federal-land state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), is among the 11 people Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has chosen to serve on a newly resurrected National Park System Advisory Board.
The new members of the volunteer panel were announced this week, just days after Zinke and the Interior Department hosted Ken Ivory and members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative nonprofit backed by Charles and David Koch that advocates handing over control of federal lands to states. Even the broad association between the Interior Department and the radical movement opposing federal land stewardship again raises questions about the seriousness of Zinke’s public pronouncements on the issue.
Ken Ivory, a leader of the pro-land-transfer movement, is a former head of the right-wing think tank Federalism in Action’s Free the Lands project, which has argued that getting public lands out of the federal government’s hands is “the only solution big enough to tackle” today’s economic challenges. In 2012 he introduced legislation demanding that nearly all federal lands in Utah ― some 30 million acres ― be turned over to the state. The bill was passed and signed into law, but the lands have remained under federal control.
View the complete December 7 article by Chris D’Angelo on the Hufflington Post website here.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie reportedly praised Confederate States President Jefferson Davis in a 1995 speech, calling him a “martyr to the Lost Cause” and an “exceptional man in an exceptional age.” According to CNN, Wilkie also said viewing Confederate history through the “lens of slavery” is a “disservice to our ancestors.” “To view our history and the ferocity of the Confederate soldier solely through the lens of slavery and by the slovenly standards of the present is dishonest and a disservice to our ancestors,” Wilkie reportedly said at a U.S. Capitol event hosted by the United Daughters of Confederacy. “We can’t surrender American history to an enforced political orthodoxy dictated to our children by attention-starved politicians, street corner demagogues, and tenured campus radicals.”
CNN reports that the “Lost Cause” theory of the Civil War, which is typically touted by neo-Confederates, denies slavery played a central role in the conflict. More recently, Wilkie attended and spoke at a a Sons of Confederate Veterans event in 2009, CNN reports. Veterans Affairs Press Secretary Curt Cashour told CNN the events Wilkie attended were “were strictly historical in nature” and said the secretary “stopped participating in them once the issue became divisive.”
President Trump insisted when he made Matthew G. Whitaker his acting attorney general that he wasn’t familiar with Whitaker’s past commentary critical of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe.
But his new pick to be the attorney general has a record of making similar comments, and despite some favorable comments from Democrats, those could pose a problem in his coming confirmation fight.
President Trump confirmed Friday that former attorney general William P. Barr will be his nominee to head the Justice Department. Picking George H.W. Bush’s attorney general would seem a pretty safe and confirmable pick, on its surface.
View the complete December 7 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.
Nobody wants to be Trump’s chief of staff. And why would they? Trump has turned the White House’s top job into “a laughing stock,” and his entire presidency has been defined by chaos.
Politico: “A job that was once a ticket to Washington royalty has recently become a laughing stock.”
Vice News: “Nobody Wants To Manage Trump’s White House”
Politico Playbook: “We made a round of calls last night about the chief of staff job and heard the same thing over and over again: No one wants it this time, and it’s an exceedingly bad phase of the administration to take the helm.
Continue reading “White House Chaos: Nobody Wants To Be Chief”
DNC Chair Tom Perez released the following statement in response to President Trump nominating William Barr as his next attorney general:
“Our next attorney general must be able to stand up to the president and act as an independent law enforcement official. Trump has consistently shown a corrupt disregard for the rule of law and used his office to undermine civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights.
“William Barr must assure the American people that he will resist any attempt by the president to interfere in law enforcement matters, and he must unequivocally commit to protecting the special counsel’s investigation and defending our constitutional rights.”
Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Friday gave a full-throated endorsement to the president’s pick to fill the post, former Attorney General William Barr, but Democratic senators and civil rights advocates are sounding alarms.
William Barr “deserves” from the Senate “overwhelming bipartisan support,” Trump said while addressing a law enforcement conference in Kansas City. “There’s no one more capable or qualified for this position,” he claimed.
Whitaker called the George H.W. Bush-era AG a “highly qualified” nominee-in-waiting to possibly return to the post for a second time. He said Barr’s confirmation would mark a “continuation of this law-and-order presidency.”
View the complete December 7 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.
This post has been updated with Trump’s response, at bottom.
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke publicly about the challenges he faced while working with President Trump in an interview on Dec. 6. (Reuters)
Rex Tillerson came a little bit closer Thursday to saying what he actually thinks of President Trump.
The fired secretary of state, who while in office reportedly called Trump a “moron” (and declined to deny it), expounded on his thoughts on the president in a rare interview with CBS News’s Bob Schieffer in Houston.
It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines. Tillerson said Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read” and repeatedly attempted to do illegal things. He didn’t call Trump a “moron,” but he didn’t exactly suggest that Trump was a scholar — or even just a steady leader.
View the complete December 7 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.
By selecting State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News anchor Heather Nauert as his next UN ambassador, President Donald Trump has further consolidated his control of America’s foreign policy.
“Heather Nauert will be nominated for the ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump told reporters on his way to Marine One on Friday.
Other than her 20-month run as the top spokesperson at Foggy Bottom, Nauert has no diplomatic experience. She spent her entire career before going to State at ABC News and Fox. The latter is Trump’s favorite cable news network, which helped her land the State Department job.
View the complete December 7 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.
