Former President Donald Trump's United States of America

[AlvinofDiaspar]

That's like a not so subtle threat that he has incriminating materials.

AoD

 

[salsa]

This is amusing. A newly discovered species of moth that has "yellowish-white scales" on its head has been dubbed Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. As the biologist explains, "the new species is named in honor of Donald J. Trump, to be installed as the 45th President of the United States. I hope he takes it with the good spirit as it is intended. We need the next administration to continue protecting vulnerable and fragile habitats across the United States.” He also noted the similarities between the moth head and Donald Trump's hairstyle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...amed-for-donald-trump/?utm_term=.496160ef26c2

 

[BlackLivesMatterJeff]

I can't believe that racist white pig is now president! I was in Washington yesterday to protest his inauguration with BLM, Antifa and other anarchist groups. We were hoping to stop him from being president but the pigs stopped us. In addition to that there were these racist Bikers for Trump jerks that were "protecting" Trump supporters. I got assaulted by one of those old white racists because I told some woman she better take off that "Make America Great Again" hat off if she knows what's good for her. And the police wouldn't even arrest the guy. If that's not proof the police are not biased I don't know what is.

We were hoping to do more but these racist Bikers, police and army teamed up against us but at least some in our group smashed corporate America's windows and cars. Seriously if corporate America wants Trump that's what they deserve.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The White House website's page on climate change just disappeared

From link.

"The requested page "/energy/climate-change" could not be found."

That is all that remains of the White House's webpage on climate change.

The White House website was updated immediately after Donald Trump assumed the nation's highest office. The president has long said he doubts whether global climate change is real, and there now appears to be no reference to it on whitehouse.gov.

Under former President Barack Obama, the website previously hosted sections that laid out plans for combating climate change and steps the Obama administration had already taken.

This is what they looked like as of Thursday, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

In the section of the updated website dedicated to issues, the Trump team has highlighted six topics, including "America First Energy Policy." The policy page touts Trump's plan to tap oil and gas reserves and to revive the coal industry, but does not mention renewable energy.

"For too long, we've been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule," the page says.

 

[W. K. Lis]

On first day, Trump signs health care executive order

From link.

President Donald Trump quickly assumed the mantle of the White House on Friday, making his first executive order one aimed at his predecessor's signature health care law and swearing-in members of his national security team to his Cabinet.

Hours after delivering a stinging rebuke of the political status quo in his inaugural address, Trump sat at the president's formal desk in the Oval Office as he signed the order that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said was aimed at "minimizing the economic burden" of the "Obamacare" law.

The order notes that Trump intends to seek the "prompt repeal" of the law. But in the meantime, it allows the Health and Human Services Department and other federal agencies to delay implementing any piece of the law that might impose a "fiscal burden" on states, health care providers, families or individuals.

Moments later, Vice-President Mike Pence administered the oath of office to Defence Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, the first members of Trump's Cabinet to clear Senate confirmation.

The swearing-in ceremonies came amid a hectic set of activity late Friday, before Trump was to attend three inaugural balls. As Trump signed the paperwork, the White House announced Priebus had sent a memorandum to agencies and departments outlining guidelines for slowing regulations.

Asked about his first day as president, Trump said, "It was busy but good — a beautiful day."

Although Trump campaigned on a detailed 18-point plan of things to do on Day One, he has since backed off some of his promised speed, downplaying the importance of a rapid-fire approach to complex issues that may involve negotiations with Congress or foreign leaders. Trump has said that he expects Monday to be the first big workday, his effective Day One.

On Friday, he switched between the official business of governing and the pageantry of his inauguration, making his first official moves as president in an ornate room steps from the Senate floor. Flanked by Pence and congressional leaders before his congressional luncheon, Trump praised each of his Cabinet nominees as he signed the papers formalizing their nominations. He also engaged in banter with his new congressional rivals, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Trump also signed a proclamation declaring a national day of patriotism, according to a tweet from White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

Priebus' memo says that agencies shouldn't submit any regulations to be published in the Federal Register unless a Trump-selected agency head approves it. That appears to mean that some regulations that had been approved by President Barack Obama's administration would be halted. It also freezes any regulations that are already in the pipeline to be published and allows time for other pending regulations to be reviewed by Trump's administration.

The memo is similar to one that Obama's chief of staff issued the day Obama was inaugurated in 2009.

Before Mattis could be confirmed by Senate, Trump had to sign a bill passed by Congress last week granting a one-time exception from federal law barring former U.S. service members who have been out of uniform for less than seven years from holding the top Pentagon job. The restriction is meant to preserve civilian control of the military.

Mattis, 66, retired from the Marine Corps in 2013. Hours later, he was confirmed by the Senate as Trump watched his inaugural parade from a stand outside the White House. The Senate later confirmed retired Gen. John Kelly to lead the Homeland Security Department.

There were others signs his new government was up and running. Federal websites and agencies immediately began reflecting the transfer of power, and WhiteHouse.gov was revamped for Trump's policy priorities as pages about LGBT rights and the Obama administration's climate change plan were eliminated.

Shortly after Trump became president, the Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the Obama administration's planned reduction of mortgage insurance premium rates, a move that had been intended to make buying a home more affordable.

More significant policy announcements are expected in the early days of the Trump administration.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Meanwhile, while fingers are in their ears:

 

[gabe]

The White House website's page on climate change just disappeared

From link.

Welcome to Trump's America. Please set your clocks back 60 years!

 

[BurlOak]

Let's see.

If Trump takes us back 30 years, New York will be underwater by now. If he takes us back 40 years, we are in an ice age now. Maybe 60 years is when science and politics were kept separate.

 

[Videodrome]

Sean Spicer is the new Iraq information minister.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Trump claims media 'dishonest' over crowd photos

From link:

Mr Trump was speaking after photographs were published appearing to show more people attended the inauguration of his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009.

Mr Trump's press secretary said it had been "the largest audience to ever see an inauguration" even though figures he cited add up to under 750,000 people.

He said the new US administration would hold the media accountable.

On Saturday, millions in the US and around the world took part in protests to highlight women's rights, which activists believe to be under threat from the new administration.

In response, President Trump tweeted on Sunday: "Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election!

"Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly."

The largest US rally was in the capital, Washington DC, which city officials estimated to be more than 500,000-strong, followed by New York with some 400,000 and hundreds of thousands elsewhere, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

For decades, the US National Park Service provided official crowd estimates for gatherings on the National Mall.

But the agency stopped providing counts after organisers of the Million Man March protest about rights for black people in 1995 threatened a lawsuit.

Mr Trump said "it looked like a million and a half people" there on Friday - with the crowd extending all the way back to the Washington Monument.

He provided no evidence and photos show that the crowd did not reach the monument.

To support the argument, his press secretary Sean Spicer outlined figures amounting to 720,000 people in the Mall, despite having asserted seconds before that "no one had numbers" for the inauguration.

He also said that the number of people taking Washington's subway system on the day had been higher than during Mr Obama's second inauguration in 2013.

In fact, there were 782,000 tickets that year, but 571,000 this year, the Washington-area transit authority says.

Mr Spicer also said that plastic sheets had been used for the first time to cover the grass which "had the effect of highlighting areas people were not standing whereas in years past the grass eliminated this visual". In fact, the grass was also covered in 2013.

He added that fences and metal detectors had had an impact on attendance, but this had also been denied by officials as being a factor.

District of Columbia officials had made preparations for an estimated 700,000 to 900,000 people.

Trump must be using George Orwell's book "1984" as his instruction guide.

 

[Euphoria]

What do you think is meant by the notion that we're living in the "post-truth era". At first glance I think it means that people ignore the facts to suit their own ends. On a deeper level I think it's the recognition that most (all?) messages are forms of persuasion. It's not that there's no reality, it's that very little messaging is factual and objective. Trump has lied often and doesn't care because he assumes that there are agendas behind the messaging out there that perpetuate the powers that be. Problem is, he's one of the powers that be, part of the establishment.

 

[Johnny Au]

Confirmation bias is Trump's weapon of choice. No amounts of evidence, no matter how reliable, can change Trump's mind (or his supporters').

 

[Videodrome]

"Day Of Patriotic Devotion" is something that North Korea would think of, yet it is coming from the White House....

 

[W. K. Lis]

And so it begins...

Trump signs executive orders on TPP exit, federal hiring freeze, global abortion policy

See link.

...
Trump reverses abortion-related U.S. policy, bans funding to international health groups

Yet again, a rule is back in effect to block U.S. international family-planning assistance to foreign organizations that use funds from other sources to perform or discuss abortions.

President Donald Trump, in reinstating a rule first instituted by President Ronald Reagan, gave foreign nonprofits a stark choice: Stop providing abortions, or any information about abortions, or lose valuable dollars from the United States, the biggest global funder of family-planning services.

The move drew immediate denunciations from family-planning groups and their Democratic allies and praise from pro-life officials and Republicans.

Since its inception in 1984, the funding ban - officially known as the "Mexico City policy" and referred to as "the global gag rule" by its critics - has been repealed and reinstated every time a different political party has assumed power in the White House.

The rule stayed in place under President George H.W. Bush and then was rescinded by President Bill Clinton in January 1993. When President George W. Bush came into office in 2001, he imposed the rule that Jan. 22 - the 23rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion in the United States. President Barack Obama lifted the rule eight years later.

Even when the rule has not been in effect, however, existing federal law has barred the use of U.S. funds to pay for abortions anywhere in the world.

Trump's action, coming just two days after massive women's marches around the world to protest his ascension to the presidency, sparked a flurry of angry responses from Democratic lawmakers and women's health organizations.

"It's a new year, new Congress, new Administration, but R's are taking us back to a dangerous past," tweeted Florida Rep. Lois Frankel. "We won't go back to coat hanger medicine."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that Trump's order "returns us to disgraceful era that dishonored the American values of free speech and inflicted untold suffering on millions of women around the world."

Marie Stopes International, which provides family-planning and abortion services in several countries around the world, said that it would not agree to the revived policy because it "violates our core belief in individual choice."

Last year, the group said, it received $30 million in aid from the United States Agency for International Development - 17 percent of its donor grant income. The loss of such funds, the group predicted on its website, will result in an increase in unintended pregnancies and abortions.

In 2011, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine found that implementation of the Mexico City policy was linked to increases in abortion rates in sub-Saharan African countries. But they said that they couldn't draw "definitive conclusions about the underlying cause of this increase."

Pro-life officials and groups praised Trump's action. "This is a vital step in the journey to make America great again, recognizing and affirming the universal ideal that all human beings have inherent worth and dignity, regardless of their age or nationality,"said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

"Funding foreign groups that promote or participate in abortion violates the principle that there should be a 'wall of separation' between taxpayer money and abortion," he said.

The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List sounded a similar theme, saying that Trump's order "sends a strong signal about his Administration's pro-life priorities."

Republican Rep. Diane Black, R, Tenn., praised the move to restrict family planning funding as "compassionate," saying that Trump has started to "make good on his promises to the millions of pro-life Americans that helped him ascend to this office."

Reagan announced the policy at a United Nations conference in Mexico City. It "marked an expansion of existing legislative restrictions that already prohibited U.S. funding for abortion internationally," according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which issued a backgrounder on the issue Monday.

Before the Mexico City policy was promulgated, the foundation said, NGOs could use non-U.S. funds to engage in abortion-related activities as long as they kept separate accounts for any U.S. money received. That practice was not permitted under the new policy.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Do not look behind the curtain, there's nothing to see. See link.

Trump issues gag order on Environmental Protection Agency staff

The move could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice.

The Trump administration has instituted a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and barred staff from awarding any new contracts or grants.

The move could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice projects aimed at helping poor communities.

The Trump administration has also ordered a “temporary suspension” of all new business activities at the department, including issuing task orders or work assignments to EPA contractors. The orders are expected to have a significant and immediate impact on EPA activities nationwide.

According to its website, each year, the EPA awards more than $4 billion (U.S.) in funding for grants and other assistance agreements. For now, it appears that funding is on hold, casting a cloud of uncertainty over one of the agency’s core functions, as well as over the scientists, state and local officials, universities and native American tribes that often benefit from the grants.

A spokesperson for the EPA declined to comment.

It is unclear whether the move by the incoming administration was related to President Trump’s order Monday that federal agencies halt hiring in all areas on the executive branch except for the military, national security and public safety, which also curbed contracting as a way of compensating for the freeze.

“Contracting outside the Government to circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted,” the memorandum states.

Administration officials inserted the language in an apparent attempt to curb the growth in federal contracts that arose during previous freezes imposed under Presidents Carter and Reagan. But the total halt in contracts and grants or a single agency appeared to go beyond that specific provision, which applied solely to contracting activities in response to the halt in hiring.

Myron Ebell, who oversaw the EPA transition for the new administration, told ProPublica on Monday that the freezing of grants and contracts was not unprecedented.

“They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-backed group that has long sought to slash the authority of the EPA.

“This may be a little wider than some previous administrations, but it’s very similar to what others have done,” he told the publication.

But not in recent history has such a blanket freeze taken place, and one employee told ProPublica he did not recall anything like it in nearly a decade with the agency.

The move is likely to increase anxieties inside an already tense agency. Ebell and other transition officials have made little secret about their goal of greatly reducing the EPA’s footprint and regulatory reach. Trump has repeatedly criticized the EPA for what he calls a string of onerous, expensive regulations that are hampering businesses. And his nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has repeatedly sued the EPA over the years, challenging its legal authority to regulate everything from mercury pollution to various wetlands and waterways to carbon emissions from power plants.