The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

Donald Trump Tweets Angry, Racist Rant at Wrong Megan Rapinoe Account

On Tuesday, a clip went viral of U.S. Women’s National Team star forward Megan Rapinoe informing a reporter that she would not be “going to the fucking White House,” should the USWNT win the World Cup. You knew right then and there that somehow, eventually, we would get a Tweet.

On Wednesday morning, it happened, as President Donald Trump responded with a series of social media posts calling out Rapinoe, and also making some astoundingly racist comments about the NBA, specifically about owners not being called owners anymore (?) and “black unemployment.”







All par for the course, but the real kicker is that Trump’s mushy brain didn’t even realize that he tagged the wrong Twitter handle the first time around.

https://twitter.com/meganrapino/status/1143889092977016832

So he just did it all again.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1143892326286266368

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1143892328236687361

Just another day in America.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Judge says Democrats can begin collecting Trump financial records in emoluments suit

A federal judge told US House and Senate Democrats they can begin collecting financial evidence this week about Donald Trump's businesses for a lawsuit.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, of the US District Court in Washington, denied an attempt by the Justice Department to stop the Democrats from collecting information from the Trump Organization and to appeal early court decisions in the lawsuit, which tests the constitutionality of Trump's business holdings while he serves as President.

The case is one of several avenues Democrats have to get to Trump's financial records.
Sullivan said the group of more than 200 members can begin collecting evidence June 28 through late September. Previously, the members of Congress said they plan to seek both documents and depositions from the Trump Organization.

But the Justice Department had hoped to take the case to an appeals court before the evidence collection began.

"This case will be poised for resolution within six months; an immediate appeal would hardly materially advance its ultimate termination," Sullivan wrote on Tuesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the ruling and said in a statement, "No one is above the law -- not even the President. Once again, the courts have resoundingly reaffirmed our efforts to hold the President accountable for corruption, and ensure that the President acts in the public interest, not his own interest."

This may not be the end of the fight for Trump's records, however.

The Justice Department will continue to challenge the rulings so far and will attempt to take its challenge directly to a federal court of appeals despite Sullivan's decision Tuesday. In a statement Tuesday, spokesperson Kelly Laco said the department will appeal.

The case "presents important questions that warrant immediate appellate review and is another impractical attempt to disrupt and distract the President from his official duties," Laco said.

In a similar case over Trump's business proceeds that had reached the evidence-collection phase, the Justice Department took the same unusual step to get an appeals court to review the matter.

The appeals court has not yet made a decision in that case, which remains paused.
More than 200 Democratic senators and House members sued Trump in this case. They claim his refusal to present his business holdings to Congress for their approval deprived them of a vote, and his continued business holdings violate the constitutional anti-corruption section known as the Emoluments Clause, which says elected officials cannot collect proceeds from foreign powers.

Sullivan previously signed off on their lawsuit, saying they had the authority to challenge the President and that the legal definition of "emoluments" was broad.

"This extraordinary lawsuit has all the hallmarks of a case worthy of" early review by an appellate court, because it looked at an issue that's never been fully weighed by the courts before, the Justice Department had argued.

But the members of Congress called the early appeal of an appeal a delay tactic built around Trump running for reelection.

"If the President succeeds in running out the clock, an entire presidential term will have gone by with the nation's highest officeholder making countless foreign policy decisions under a cloud of potentially divided loyalty and compromised judgment caused by his enrichment from foreign states. That is precisely the nightmare scenario the Framers adopted the Foreign Emoluments Clause to avoid," the members of Congress wrote in a previous court filing.

On Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, issued statements applauding Sullivan's direction to begin evidence collection. "In a thoughtful, well-reasoned opinion, Judge Sullivan articulated what the law makes clear: there is absolutely no reason to delay one more day. ... Today, the courts spoke: no longer."

#Resist

[Athos_131]

New Emails Reveal How the Trump Regime Creates Twitter Propaganda to Excuse the Migrant Baby Jails

On May 31, 2018, the Twitter account for Tyler Q. Houlton, former press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, sent out a tweet lecturing Senator Dianne Feinstein of California about the Trump regime’s immigration policies. The DHS tweet was shocking for its aggressive nature, but newly released emails reveal that the tweet wasn’t just a hot-headed, spur-of-the-moment slip-up. The tweet went through revisions and was reviewed by numerous people before it was sent out into the world.

The bizarrely confrontational tweet, which is still up on Twitter, starts with “News Flash @SenFeinstein: We don’t have a policy of separating families.” But as we now know, the Trump regime did, in fact, have a policy of separating children from their families at the border, and the policy never really stopped.

Children are still taken from their families if they’re traveling with someone like a grandparent or uncle and those kids, sometimes as young as 4 months old, are classified as “unaccompanied minors.” And those children are often held with limited access to food and water in disgusting concentration camps, described as “torture facilities,” by a physician who recently visited one in Texas.

The DHS tweet from March 2018 continued, “If you commit a crime in this country, the police will take you to jail regardless if you have a family or not. Illegal aliens should not get preferential treatment because they happen to be illegal aliens.”

No one in U.S. concentration camps is getting “preferential treatment,” as all the world can now see. Six migrant children have died in U.S. custody since the tweet was sent, and no migrant children had died in U.S. custody in the previous decade.

https://twitter.com/SpoxDHS/status/1002230453871546369

The DHS tweet may not seem that strange from the dizzying perspective of 2019, but this kind of posturing by a federal agency against a sitting senator would’ve been frowned upon before President Donald Trump took power. In fact, it seems pretty unheard of for a government agency that’s supposed to be calm and collected.

But how and why did the tweet get sent? Gizmodo obtained internal emails about the tweet through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted in May of 2018. The DHS emails were delivered to Gizmodo yesterday.

The press secretary’s ire was apparently first raised after someone at DHS saw this tweet from Bloomberg News journalist Sahil Kapur:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1002197356727734278/photo/1

Katie Waldman, an assistant press secretary for Public Affairs at DHS, sent the tweet to her boss Tyler Houlton and to Jonathan Rath Hoffman, another assistant secretary at the baby jail propaganda agency.

The three-person team then brainstormed different tweets over email, all apparently with the assumption that they should address Senator Feinstein directly. Unfortunately for us, much of the discussion has been redacted:



But we do get glimpses of the process that show it wasn’t just Houlton tweeting wildly, as Gizmodo first assumed. At one point Hoffman asked if “OLa,” presumably DHS’s Office of Legislative Affairs, had approved the tweet yet.

“What did OLa say? Don’t want to hit a member without their sign off,” Hoffman wrote to his colleagues.

Eventually, they landed on wording that they liked and Houlton sent an email to Waldman with “Katie go ahead and tweet this.” After the tweet was sent, Houlton distributed an email to over half a dozen people at DHS asking them to spread his tweet in stories. Believe it or not, it seemed like he was pretty proud of the effort.

“All - Senator Feinstein is drafting legislation to prevent the policy of separating families at the border. As we all know, no such policy exists and we need to push back,” the email from Houlton said.

The sloppy formatting suggests that the language they landed on was a hybrid of at least two different ideas:



The emails from attorneys at DHS have largely been redacted as well, but we get a sense of what they might contain from Houlton’s responses.

“Yes. It was rapid response in order to push back on false narratives in real time. Does OGC need to approve tweets?” Houlton said in an email to attorney John M. Mitnick, presumably referring to the Office of General Counsel. We never get the answer to that question but another email from Houlton to his assistants says that they need to “discuss improving rapid response.”

Given the context, one can imagine that the DHS lawyers were a bit concerned that agency officials were tweeting so obnoxiously at a sitting senator. Or at least one would hope that they’d be concerned. We can’t know for sure, given the redactions, but you can read all of the emails that were released to Gizmodo at the Internet Archive.

Houlton has since moved over to a job in the U.S. State Department and Hoffman has moved to the Pentagon as the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs. Admittedly, it’s not clear where Houlton or Hoffman are, currently, since the Trump regime is a parade of dunces that get shuffled around to a new position virtually every month. But wherever they are, I’m sure they’re being as honest today as they were last year.

This back and forth between employees at DHS may seem like it’s not very important a year later, especially since children are literally dying on the U.S.-Mexico border right now as a direct consequence of the Trump regime’s policies. But the emails do give us some valuable information that we should keep in mind during the Trump era: Even when it seems like members of the Trump regime are doing something off the top of their heads, there’s a good chance that it’s been planned and studied meticulously, especially when they’re lying.

And as they say, the cruelty is the point. Especially on Twitter, as any user will tell you.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

House panel votes to authorize subpoena for White House’s Conway after she fails to show for hearing

A House committee voted Wednesday to authorize a subpoena for White House counselor Kellyanne Conway after she failed to show for a hearing on a government watchdog’s findings that she broke the law dozens of times.

The House Oversight Committee voted, 25 to 16, for the subpoena after special counsel Henry Kerner said she blatantly violated the Hatch Act, a law that bars federal employees from engaging in politics during work. Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.), who has backed impeachment of President Trump, was the only Republican to cross party lines and join Democrats.

“Ms. Conway’s egregious and repeated Hatch Act violations, combined with her unrepentant attitude, are unacceptable from any federal employee, let along one in such a prominent position,” Kerner told the panel. “Her conduct hurts both federal employees, who may believe that senior officials can act with complete disregard for the Hatch Act, and the American people, who may question the nonpartisan operation of their government.”

White House lawyers on Monday rejected Oversight’s request for Conway to appear at the hearing, citing a bipartisan practice that West Wing officials do not testify to Congress while they still work in the administration.

Democrats, however, countered that the White House had no right to claim executive privilege or immunity for Conway because the alleged violations deal with her personal actions — not her duties advising the president or working in the West Wing. They accused the administration of stonewalling yet another House investigation.

“This is about right and wrong. This is about the core principle of our precious democracy — that nobody, not one person, nobody in this country is above the law,” Committee chairman Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said. “Contrary to claims by Ms. Conway and President Trump, this is not a conspiracy to silence her or restrict her First Amendment rights. This is an effort to enforce federal law.”

It is unclear, however, what Democrats will do if Conway ignores the subpoena, which is expected to be issued soon. She could be held in criminal contempt of Congress. 

The Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity during work hours or on the job. But a report submitted to President Trump earlier this month by the Office of Special Counsel — which a Trump appointee runs — found that Conway violated that law on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

It recommended that Trump terminate her federal employment. The president had indicated that he will not fire her.

Conway has appeared on national television to defend her name. On Monday morning, she said on Fox News Channel that House Democrats are trying to retaliate against her for managing Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“You know what they’re mad about?” Conway said. “They want to put a big roll of masking tape over my mouth because I helped as a campaign manager for the successful part of the campaign . . . So they want to chill free speech because they don’t know how to beat [Trump] at the ballot box.”

Republicans also derided the hearing as a political attack aimed at silencing one of Trump’s most loyal aides. Before her time in the White House, Conway helped run Trump's campaign, helping him to victory in 2016. Since then, she has frequently appeared on television to defend Trump and attack his political opponents.

Kerner, in an interview with The Washington Post, pushed back on the assertion that politics in any way influenced his decision.

“We’re trying to hold Ms. Conway to the same standard we hold other people in government to,” Kerner said Monday. “My staff came up with violations. They’re obvious. She says things that are campaign messages.”

The hearing created an awkward dynamic on the GOP side: Kerner is a former Oversight Committee staffer who worked for Republicans and spent years investigating former president Barack Obama. He was once well-liked and friendly with fellow committee GOP staff and lawmakers. And he actually sat beside them on the dais years ago, advising GOP chairmen.

But as Kerner returned as the Democrats’ star witness, Republicans immediately challenged his credibility. Top committee Republican Jim Jordan (Ohio) argued that Kerner felt slighted by Conway and sought to punish her. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) tried to get Kerner to say that he was pressured into the decision by liberal groups, warning him several times that he was under oath.

“The reason we’re here today is because Mr. Kerner got his feelings hurt,” Jordan said. “Mr. Kerner felt slighted. Ms. Conway didn’t pay enough attention to him and his office . . . You know why she didn’t? Because the allegations were ridiculous.”

Kerner defended himself, arguing that he took the unprecedented step of recommending Conway’s firing because it was consistent with the treatment of nonpolitical appointees under the Merit Systems Protection Board, which enforces the law for other federal employees.

Political appointees like Conway, however, are not subject to the board’s oversight on the Hatch Act. Democrats have questioned whether that is fair and are considering changing the law.

Kerner also pushed back on the GOP assertion that other Democratic political appointees have broken the Hatch Act and got off. Kerner said those offenders in the past were admonished, apologized and stopped committing any offenses. Kerner said the OSC had “never had a repeat offender” like Conway, who refused to change her behavior and who “made a comment saying she didn’t feel she was bound by the Hatch Act.”

 Democrats chided Republicans for putting party loyalty to Trump over the rule of law — even by assailing their own former colleague. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) used his time to highlight Kerner’s onetime job on the committee, asking him if he were a liberal Democrat and feigning shock when Kerner said he was a “conservative Republican.”

“President Trump appointed you? Oh, my lord. Gosh!” he gasped, knowing full well that Trump tapped Kerner. To Republicans he said: “He’s not a partisan. He’s not some wild-eyed liberal. He’s doing his job!”

Before the vote, the hearing grew tense. Meadows argued that Democrats were setting a dangerous precedent and trying to undermine free speech.

“We are better than this!” he exclaimed as he grew angry.

Cummings shot back with equal fire: “We have gotten to a point, sadly, where disobeying the law is okay.”

Meadows tried to interject to argue that was not what he was saying, but Cummings slammed his gavel on the table and yelled, “it is!”

Freshman Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) summed up the Democratic frustration.

“Instead of appearing before this committee, Ms. Conway appeared on ‘Fox and Friends!’ We have offered her a platform to explain herself and she did not show up!” Pressley said. “Ms. Conway ignores OSC, ignores the Hatch Act and now she’s ignoring the committee. This is completely disrespectful to us as a coequal branch of government.”

The Office of Special Counsel is a quasi-judicial independent agency that adjudicates claims of retaliation by whistleblowers and administers the Hatch Act and other civil service rules. It is separate from the office run by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who led an inquiry of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Pro-Trump message board ‘quarantined’ by Reddit following violent threats

The biggest forum for supporters of President Trump on Reddit has been “quarantined” following months of incitements to violence and other offensive behavior, the tech giant said Wednesday, in a move that could further inflame conservatives’ claims of social-media bias.

The forum, called “r/The_Donald,” has long served as a highly trafficked and controversial gathering place for supporters of Trump and Republicans on Reddit, the United States’ fifth-most popular website.

The move comes amid persistent allegations from Republicans that leading technology platforms, most of which are headquartered in the liberal bastion of northern California, are unfairly squelching conservative voices online. This partisan battle also is playing out amid a broader debate over whether private technology companies should be mediating free speech and whether widely accepted standards — such as prohibitions against incitements to violence — are being consistently and transparently applied.

Created in 2015, “The_Donald” counts roughly 750,000 followers and advertises itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

Reddit officials said on Wednesday that the “r/The_Donald” board had allowed or encouraged months of “rule-breaking behavior,” including the “encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon.”

“We are clear in our sitewide policies that posting content that encourages or threatens violence is not allowed,” Reddit spokeswoman Anna Soellner said in a statement to The Washington Post.

“We are sensitive to what could be considered political speech,” Soellner added, but “recent behaviors including threats against the police and public figures is content that is prohibited by our violence policy.”

The quarantine action will effectively demote the forum on Reddit, removing key features and restricting how its content is shared across the site, including blocking it from appearing in searches or recommendations. It is not an outright ban, but will conceal the forum behind a warning and require viewers to verify they are sure they want to view its contents.

“It’s a really positive step,” said Becca Lewis, a researcher at Stanford University and the think tank Data & Society. The forum “r/The_Donald,” which Lewis has studied extensively, “has been a bastion of hate speech and harassment for years.” She said there are numerous other forums on Reddit where conservatives can share their views and express support for Trump and other political figures.

Quarantines are rare punishments imposed on only the forums Reddit has deemed most offensive or upsetting. Past quarantines have been imposed on forums devoted to white supremacy, Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and videos of fatal violence.

Wednesday’s move by Reddit came after Republican state senators in Oregon fled the state to block a Democrat-supported climate bill, sparking a bizarre partisan stalemate. Following calls for the state police to go retrieve the lawmakers, local far-right militia groups said they would use violence to protect the senators.

Posters on “r/The_Donald” have echoed the militias in saying they would protect the lawmakers by any means. “Rifles are the only way we’re going to get any peace in our lives ever again,” one “r/The_Donald” poster wrote, according to a compilation published Monday by the liberal watchdog site Media Matters for America. Another said it was good to “threaten violence . . . because nothing else is working.”

The posters on “r/The_Donald” long have trafficked in edgy “trolling” and offensive behavior, promoting anti-Semitic memes and baseless conspiracy theories, including that victims of the Parkland school shooting were “crisis actors.”

Some of the top threads on “r/The_Donald” Wednesday criticized E. Jean Carroll, the author who recently accused Trump of sexual assault. Posters also called U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe a “human leech” after Trump criticized her for supposedly acting disrespectfully.

Reddit is a link-sharing and discussion site where readers can submit and vote on posts; the most “upvoted” posts are promoted more widely across the site. The site’s forums, known as “subreddits,” operate independently from the company and are overseen by volunteer moderators, who are expected to follow sitewide rules banning violent threats, harassment and other prohibited content.

Reddit is less known than more mainstream social-media sites, but it has long been regarded as a feeder source for many of the viral memes and inside jokes that take off across the Web.

“It’s a meeting place for both normal and crazy people,” said Joel Finkelstein, director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which tracks how racism, anti-Semitism and other hateful ideas spread online. “It’s like a canal meeting the ocean.”

“r/The_Donald” was particularly influential among Trump’s base: Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager for 2016 and 2020, tweeted in the months before Trump’s election that he was a daily visitor. Trump himself participated in an “Ask Me Anything” question-and-answer session on the forum during the 2016 campaign.

The forum’s moderators tweeted on Wednesday that the company had moved to “totally suppress” the forum “on the eve of the Democrat Debates.” In a post on the forum, the moderators said the company has “set up an impossible standard as a reason to kill us before the 2020 election.”

Forum moderators had in weeks past changed elements of the “subreddit,” removing the down-vote button and changing the “Report” button, which allows people to flag potential rule-breaking content, to say “Deport.”

The “quarantine” move comes on the same day President Trump launched his latest attack against Silicon Valley. He threatened a potential lawsuit against Facebook and Google, without providing much detail, and accused Google of trying to rig the election. The company has repeatedly denied that claim.

Trump also accused Twitter of limiting the reach of his tweets and censoring other conservative users, a charge the tech giant has long denied. The White House on Wednesday also announced it would gather “digital leaders” next month to talk about social media but did not elaborate on who would be in attendance.

The White House did not reply to requests for comment on the Reddit move.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Eric Trump says he was spit on by an employee at a Chicago cocktail bar

An employee at a high-end Chicago cocktail bar was questioned by the Secret Service on Tuesday evening after allegedly spitting on Eric Trump, according to local media reports and an interview with another worker at the establishment.

The president’s son confirmed the incident to Breitbart News.

“It was purely a disgusting act by somebody who clearly has emotional problems,” Trump, 35, told the conservative site. He declined to comment to The Washington Post.

Trump, who is executive vice president of the Trump Organization, was at the Aviary around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday when he was allegedly spit on, NBC reported.

The Secret Service declined to comment on the incident. Anthony Guglielmi, a Chicago Police Department spokesman, confirmed on Twitter that local officers assisted the Secret Service at the bar but declined to discuss what happened.

Aviary, in Chicago’s West Loop, said Wednesday that an “unfortunate incident” involving Trump and one of its employees occurred and said the unnamed employee was placed on leave.

“What is certain is this: no customer should ever be spit upon,” the restaurant said in a statement obtained by local NBC reporter Mary Ann Ahern.

The restaurant has been bombarded since the incident, it said, with “hundreds” of people calling to threaten employees and post fake reviews online. Aviary also said it was troublesome that others praised the incident as an act of civil disobedience.

“A degrading act lowers the tenor of debate,” Aviary said.

Yelp appeared to have removed some negative reviews that flooded the restaurant’s page. It later posted a warning to users that recent news reports caused an uptick of people visiting to weigh in.

Restaurants and bars have regularly become hostile territory for Trump family, staffers and allies in recent years, as the establishments’ owners, workers and customers have harassed or chased out such people as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sarah Sanders, sparking debate about what constitutes appropriate political protest and whether such battles should extend to the dinner table.

Eric Trump attributed the alleged spitting incident to the employee’s politics.

“For a party that preaches tolerance, this once again demonstrates they have very little civility,” Trump told Breitbart, apparently referencing Democrats. “When somebody is sick enough to resort to spitting on someone, it just emphasizes a sickness and desperation and the fact that we’re winning.”

Aviary has already waded national political discourse. The boundary-pushing establishment that has nabbed a James Beard Award for its bar program. Its co-owner, Nick Kokonas, made headlines in January by offering the Clemson Tigers, college football’s national champions, “an actual celebration dinner” at his restaurant Alinea after President Trump served the players a banquet of fast food at the White House.

After the bar closed for the night, another worker at the Aviary confirmed the basic details of the incident to The Post, though they spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Hours after the incident, Eric Trump took to Twitter to post photos of his family’s hotel property along the Chicago River, making no reference to what happened at the Aviary.

Surely someone like Yellow Wall will be alright with this development, especially given the fact that poster had just supported the attack on a journalist, from an outlet they complained was, "Anti-Trump."

#Resist

[Lois]

[Athos_131]

Megan Rapinoe Cannot Make This Any Clearer

Megan Rapinoe does not want to go to the White House. Megan Rapinoe does not want to go to the White House if the U.S. Women’s National Team wins the World Cup, because Donald Trump is the president. She does not want to visit Donald Trump because of his record and statements on racial issues, gender issues, LGBTQ issues, immigration, sexual harassment, sexual assault—take your pick, or pick all of them: If there’s a marginalized group, the president has said or done something to degrade it, marginalize it further, or outright harm it. Megan Rapinoe disagrees with all of this, because she appears to be a decent human being, and doesn’t really want to hang out with Trump because of that. This seems pretty clear-cut.

On Tuesday, when Rapinoe told Eight By Eight, “I’m not going to the fucking White House,” it wasn’t even the first time. In a May Sports Illustrated profile, Rapinoe had run down the list of causes and movement she supports, and said in plain language that those issues matter more to her than a White House visit.

“I am not going to fake it,” she said, “hobnob with the president, who is clearly against so many of the things that I am [for] and so many of the things that I actually am. I have no interest in extending our platform to him.” That last sentence is the key, isn’t it? When Trump invites championship-winning athletes to a fast-food shindig at his office, he’s glomming onto their fame and success and implicitly boasting their imprimatur. The USWNT, should it win the World Cup, will be able to choose the manner of their fêting, and its members will have the platforms to say what they want to say and celebrate what they want to celebrate without having the president’s self-satisfied grinning face looming over everything. They don’t need him. And while there are those people who will tell you that a championship-winning athlete visiting the White House is apolitical, that athlete has explicitly made the decision that the president’s beliefs, words, and actions aren’t odious enough to turn down the visit. That’s a political calculation. Rapinoe is expressing her politics, and she’s being honest about them, and she’s doing it in a way that will get attention. No different than her refusal to sing the national anthem before matches.

Of course all of this got Trump’s attention, because someone was talking about him in a setting large enough to eventually end up on Fox & Friends, and on Wednesday he pooped out some tweets at Rapinoe but also about NBA owners and black unemployment because...? Also he tweeted at the wrong person. He formally invited the USWNT to the White House, win or lose, because Trump instinctually understands what a lot of people still deny: this is a political opportunity. And if the USWNT aren’t going to extend their platform to him, he’s just going to clamber atop their platform, or perhaps be hoisted onto it it via a complicated series of ropes and pulleys.

This isn’t a he-said she-said. Rapinoe doesn’t have to respond to the president’s tweets, or clarify yet again her problems with a White House visit. And so on Thursday, at a media availability a day ahead of the de facto tournament final against France, Rapinoe tried to head off the back-and-forth with a statement.

“I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House, with exception of the expletive,” she said. “My mom would be very upset about that.

“But I think obviously answering with a lot of passion, considering how much time and effort and pride we take in the platform that we have, and using it for good, and for leaving the game in a better place and hopefully the world in a better place — I don’t think that I would want to go and I would encourage my teammates to think hard about lending that platform or having that co-opted by an administration that doesn’t feel the same way and fight for the same things we fight for.”

Clear as day.

<3

#Resist

[Athos_131]

‘It makes me angry’: Tillerson vents frustrations with Kushner

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was having dinner at a local restaurant when the owner came over to tell him that Mexico’s foreign secretary happened to be eating at the same place. Would he like to say hello?

Tillerson was surprised, he recently recounted to congressional aides, because he hadn’t been informed that his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray Caso, was in Washington, D.C. He walked over to find that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was dining with the foreign diplomat.

“I could see the color go out of the face of the foreign secretary of Mexico as I very — I smiled big, and I said: ‘Welcome to Washington,’” Tillerson told the staffers. “And I said: ‘I don’t want to interrupt what y’all are doing.’ I said: ‘Give me a call next time you’re coming to town.’ And I left it at that.”

According to Tillerson, the Mexican diplomat had thought that the secretary of State was fully aware that he was meeting with Kushner. Apparently, however, Kushner hadn’t looped in the State Department.

The anecdote was one of the most vivid that Tillerson shared with bipartisan representatives of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 21, according to a partially redacted transcript of the private conversation released Thursday.

The former secretary of State, whom Trump fired in March 2018 after just 14 months on the job, painted a portrait of a presidential administration lacking in internal coordination and cohesion. The discussion touched on everything from Tillerson’s struggle to convince the White House to let him hire people, to his “realist” view of human rights. Tillerson frequently answered questions by saying he couldn’t recall, but overall it was his most extensive personal account to date of his time spent as America’s chief diplomat.

The conversation — which lasted more than six hours, including breaks — occurred with committee staffers. Tillerson also met for about 90 minutes with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel and ranking member Rep. Mike McCaul. That conversation was not included in the transcript.

Some snippets of the conversation already have been reported, such as Tillerson’s comments that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had out-prepared Trump for meetings, and whether the Russians had manipulated Trump and Tillerson in such sessions. Those earlier reports infuriated Trump, who lashed out on Twitter, calling Tillerson “dumb as a rock.”

Tillerson spoke very cautiously about Trump himself, avoiding direct criticism. But he effectively confirmed past reports of his tensions with Kushner. He expressed disdain, even anger, toward Kushner and his peripatetic role in crafting U.S. foreign policy, especially when he wouldn’t coordinate with the State Department.

From the start, it was unclear what role Kushner as well his wife, Ivanka — Trump’s daughter — would play in policy making, Tillerson said. That “made it challenging for everyone, I think, in terms of how to deal with any activities that might be undertaken by others that were not defined within the national security process itself,” he said.

Kushner, who has pitched in on everything from U.S. trade policy with Mexico to trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would sometimes travel abroad and not coordinate with the U.S. Embassy where he was going. Tillerson said he raised such issues with Kushner, who promised to “do better.”

“Not much changed,” Tillerson said.

Kushner’s relationship with leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at times hampered Tillerson’s ability to calm tensions in the Middle East, the former diplomat indicated. That was especially the case in June 2017, when those and other Arab countries decided to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar, a tiny, wealthy Arab state home to a key U.S. military facility.

The moves against Qatar, which eventually bloomed into a full-on economic blockade, surprised Tillerson and other top U.S. officials. But committee staffers told Tillerson they’d been informed that the Saudis and the Emiratis had laid out their plans for Qatar to Kushner and another Trump aide, Steve Bannon, at a dinner weeks earlier, on May 20, 2017.

Tillerson said he’d not heard about that dinner until the committee staffers told him. When asked how that felt, he said: “It makes me angry … because I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.”

In a statement, the White House pushed back strongly on Tillerson's version of events.

“This story is false and a cheap attempt to rewrite history," said deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley. "The alleged ‘dinner’ to supposedly discuss the blockade never happened, and neither Jared, nor anyone in the White House, was involved in the blockade."

Gidley added: "The White House operated under the belief The Secretary of State at the time, Mr. Tillerson, would and should know what his own team was working on. Jared consistently follows proper protocols with [National Security Council] and the State Department and this instance is no different — as his work with Mexico ultimately lead to the renegotiation of the USMCA trade deal and other bilateral improvements.”

On Russia, Tillerson said he agreed with Trump’s general view that the U.S. needed to improve its relationship with Moscow, and that he tried to convey the need for Moscow and Washington to find some common ground when he met with Putin and other Russian officials.

Although he avoided delving into details about those conversations, and often said he didn’t remember much of what happened, Tillerson insisted that he was up front with Putin about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which he said he stated as a fact.

“There were a list of obstacles we went through; but, yes, the election interference was specifically mentioned as creating huge challenges for us here in Washington,” he said, adding later: “I said it just has to stop.”

Putin denied the interference had occurred, Tillerson said.

Tillerson said the White House did not tell him in advance how to frame that issue. Asked about Trump’s general knowledge of Russia, Tillerson said “he was having to learn along the way.”

The former secretary of State also said he did not remember an incident recounted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

While Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia, his lengthy report said Kushner gave Tillerson a copy of a plan for U.S.-Russian reconciliation that had been authored in part by Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive officer of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.

“I don’t recall ever receiving any such report as described in the Mueller report or any other,” Tillerson said.

Tillerson stood by his past description of Trump as “a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read things, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of lots of things.” Trump also often had a pre-set stance on issues, and he indicated to aides that they would have to convince him he was wrong but that they were not likely to succeed, Tillerson said.

The former diplomat said he wasn’t speaking pejoratively of Trump when he described him in such a manner, but that he realized he had to adjust to the president’s “style.”

That meant being extremely concise in presenting information to Trump. Still, it “never deterred me or anyone at the State Department, to my knowledge, from putting forth the best view we thought we could put together,” he said.

Tillerson also clarified earlier public comments he’d made about how Trump would often seek solutions to policy problems that were legally problematic.

“The president never asked me to violate the law,” he told the committee representatives, adding that Trump was simply on a steep learning curve. “He was very action oriented: Get it done, get it done, get it done. And so just sometimes you had to say: ‘We can’t do that.’”

Trump never referred to his personal or family business in relation to foreign policy, nor did he give indications that those were factors in his thinking on such matters, Tillerson said. He answered several questions about other characters in the Trump orbit whose business activities and overseas links have raised suspicions, such as Elliott Broidy, by saying he didn’t know them.

The former secretary repeatedly sidestepped questions about Trump’s apparent affinity for authoritarian leaders such as Putin. He also declined to discuss reports that he’d once called Trump a “moron” behind his back. He’s never denied doing so, however.

Pressed on why the Trump administration seemed often absent on promoting human rights and democracy, Tillerson argued that it really acted no differently that previous presidential administration. He described himself as a “realist” on human rights — he believes in their importance but doesn’t think harping on the topic always advances the cause long-term.

“Sometimes going in and just pounding the table over that issue, [other countries] just shut down. They just ignore you. They say ‘Just go away. You are of no use to me,’” he said.

Asked if he could describe Trump’s value system, Tillerson said “No, I can’t.” One of his lawyers then shifted the conversation away from further questioning on that point.

A State Department lawyer was present during the interview with the House committee staffers — the department requested a presence and Tillerson said he was amenable to the idea. Tillerson brought at least two attorneys of his own. The committee’s lawyers noted that he was required by law to answer the questions truthfully. The redacted portions of the transcript were done so at either State or Tillerson's request.

Engel, the committee chairman, has previously described Tillerson’s meeting with him and McCaul as “heartening” given Trump’s efforts to prevent other aides and former aides from talking to lawmakers trying to investigate the president.

Tillerson told the committee representatives that he had been looking forward to retiring from ExxonMobil and spending time with his grandchildren when Trump offered him the chance to serve as secretary of State. He met with Trump about the role after initially ignoring calls from the then-president-elect’s transition staffers in the weeks after the 2016 election.

He agreed to see Trump only hearing from Mike Pence, then the vice president-elect. “I said: ‘Well, I will take that call,’” Tillerson told the committee. Pence told him that, because of his relationships with many heads of state due to his role at ExxonMobil, Trump wanted to talk to him about global affairs.

Tillerson, who had met with past presidents to talk about such issues, agreed to meet Trump if he could do so discreetly. He refused to go “through the gold-gilded lobby of the Trump Tower because that was the revolving door of everybody that was interviewing for a job. … So I went up through a residential entrance.”

Kushner and two other Trump aides, Bannon and Reince Priebus, sat in on Tillerson’s meeting with Trump, which he recalled as being in early December 2016. During the session, Tillerson walked Trump through major world regions and spoke about U.S. challenges in each.

One example he mentioned raising with Trump was the effect international sanctions on Russia — he appeared to be alluding to penalties imposed after Moscow invaded Ukraine — were having on other countries who did business there.

“We talked about the challenges that had been created by the Russian sanctions for the Europeans because it was — it had had a greater effect on them than it had on most American businesses,” he said.

Neither Trump nor the president-elect’s aides asked many questions during the meeting, Tillerson said. But in the latter stages, Trump “went into a bit of a sales pitch and asked me to be the secretary of State, and I was stunned.”

Tillerson indicated that he had thought Trump had other people in mind for the role. He asked Trump for a few days to talk to ExxonMobil and his family, and before agreeing to take the job, he met with Trump again in person to ask three questions. He declined to tell the committee representatives what those questions or Trump’s answers were, however.

Tillerson had a rocky tenure at State. He disagreed with Trump on major issues, such as how to deal with Iran. Tillerson also alienated many U.S. diplomats by shutting them out of the decision-making process, imposing a hiring freeze and trying to push through a redesign of the department.

Tillerson said he grew frustrated with the White House for blocking him from naming certain people to top spots at State for reasons he felt were not satisfactory. He had thought he’d had more freedom to pick his aides. But months went on and numerous positions were left open.

“If people signed the ‘Never Trump’ letter, that would oftentimes disqualify them,” he recalled. “If they had tweeted something or retweeted something that the White House office thought was inappropriate, then that might disqualify them. If they had a spouse that might have supported the other candidate, that would disqualify them.”

The process “never did work smoothly,” he said.

He also said he tried to prevent the White House from proposing massive cuts to the State Department’s budget, although he said that he would have liked to see some significant budget reductions because he thought the existing spending was too bloated.

Asked about his attempt to redesign the State Department, Tillerson said the biggest obstacle to the largely unsuccessful effort were older, senior-level staffers who “don’t want anybody moving their cheese.” Tillerson also said it was his decision to dramatically reduce media access to the department, including cutting down the number of press briefings.

Tillerson told his interviewers that he was grateful to Trump for the opportunity to serve as secretary of State, and he repeatedly praised the career diplomats who work at State. He also sounded a note of modesty.

“In retrospect, the experience was both humbling and inspiring, and it will always be the great honor of my life,” he said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

U.S. Judge Blocks Trump Plan to Shift $2.5 Billion to Pay for Border Wall

A federal judge in Northern California on Friday permanently blocked the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in contested funding to build barriers along the United States’ southwestern border, dealing a blow to the White House’s efforts to fund a border wall without congressional approval.

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, who ruled at once on two pending lawsuits against the administration, stated President Trump’s efforts to shift Department of Defense funds toward the border project were “unlawful.”

The decision follows an earlier temporary injunction, issued last month, in which Judge Gilliam said the White House’s efforts did not “square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.”

The White House had sought to direct $2.5 billion from counterdrug programs in the Department of Defense toward building the wall.

The president’s critics, who said he was overstepping his constitutional authority, denounced that action, which followed a monthslong impasse between the White House and Congress, and a partial government shutdown.

A pair of lawsuits soon followed: one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition; and the other filed by the State of California and 19 other states.

Mr. Gilliam issued decisions on both cases Friday. Combined, the rulings prevent the use of the funds on projects in El Paso, Tex.; Tucson and Yuma, Ariz.; and El Centro, Calif.

The president’s critics applauded the decision.

“All President Trump has succeeded in building is a constitutional crisis, threatening immediate harm to our state,” Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said.

Gloria Smith, an attorney at the Sierra Club, said in a statement released after the decision: “We applaud the court’s decision to protect our Constitution, communities, and the environment today. We’ve seen the damage that the ever-expanding border wall has inflicted on communities and the environment for decades.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday night.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump's Protocol Chief Is Quitting Just Before the G-20 Summit

The Trump administration official in charge of diplomatic protocol plans to resign and isn’t going to Japan for this week’s Group of 20 meetings, where he would have played a sensitive behind-the-scenes role, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sean Lawler, a State Department official whose title is chief of protocol, is departing amid a possible inspector general’s probe into accusations of intimidating staff and carrying a whip in the office, according to one of the people.

The protocol chief assists the president on overseas trips, and when foreign leaders visit the White House, by making introductions and briefing the president on protocol. Lawler, a fixture in the Oval office during dignitaries’ visits, served as the president’s liaison to the diplomatic corps at the State Department.

Diplomatic fine points handled by the protocol chief include helping determine where to hold meetings and in what order participants should enter a room.

Lawler declined to comment, and the White House communications staff didn’t respond to a request for comment. Sarah Breen, a State Department spokeswoman, said, “We cannot confirm or deny the existence of any specific investigation.”

Lawler, who is in a position confirmed by the Senate and has the rank of ambassador, was scheduled to accompany the president to the G-20 on Friday and Saturday. President Donald Trump will meet with China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Topping Trump’s agenda is restarting trade talks with China.

The assistant chief of protocol, Mary-Kate Fisher, has been asked to fill Lawler’s role for the G-20 trip, one of the people said.

Lawler has worked for the government for almost three decades, according to his State Department biography. He’s a U.S. Navy veteran who has served in diplomatic roles at the White House National Security Council and U.S. Cyber Command in Maryland.

Trump has little fondness for Lawler, and repeatedly asked why he still worked at the White House, according to the people.

#Resist

[joan1984]

  Talk about burying the lead...
"...Trump has little fondness for Lawler, and repeatedly asked why he still worked at the White House, according to the people..."
--------------
  Adios, Sean... Don't let the door hit you in
the ass on your way out...

Trump's Protocol Chief Is Quitting Just Before the G-20 Summit

The Trump administration official in charge of diplomatic protocol plans to resign and isn’t going to Japan for this week’s Group of 20 meetings, where he would have played a sensitive behind-the-scenes role, according to people familiar with the matter.

[psiberzerker]

Hah!  You going to have sour grapes for everyone that resigns, or was fired?  "The Don never liked him anyway" is more like an endorsement than a strike against someone.  Every member of the "You're fired" administration with the sense to resign makes up some of the respect they lost by accepting the position, and sycophanting as much as it takes to stay in office, the way he throws away "The best people."

The best people have the integrity not to work for Jabba the Hut in the first place.

[_priapism]

The Protocol Chief’s job is to advise concerning the art of combining good manners and common sense to make effective communication possible with foreign leaders and diplomats.  Since Trump has 4th grade communication skills, walks around with toilet paper on his shoe, wears ill fitting clothes, eats junk food, and can’t be told anything, it has to be one of the most useless and frustrating jobs on the planet.

[Athos_131]

It's been widely reported Sean Lawler was abusive toward his employees.  I can see how Yellow Wall would find that amusing.  If that poster had staff I could see them being treated in a similar manner.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend

This time I will just post the relevant text.  Sue Bird does talk about a lot of other things in the article, however.

(3) O.K. so now that that’s out of the way, I’ll answer The Question. The one that’s probably most on your mind. And by that I mean: What’s it like to have the literal President of the literal United States (of literal America) go Full Adolescent Boy on your girlfriend? Hmm. Well… it’s WEIRD. And I’d say I actually had a pretty standard reaction to it: which was to freak out a little.

That’s one thing that you kind of have to know about me and Megan: our politics are similar — after we won the WNBA title in Seattle last season, no way were we going to the (f*cking) White House! — but our dispositions are not. And as we’ve been talking through a lot of this “stuff,” as it’s been happening to her, you know, I’ll be honest here….. some of it scares the sh*t out of me!!

I mean, some of it is kind of funny….. but like in a REALLY? REALLY? THIS GUY??? kind of way. Like, dude — there’s nothing better demanding your attention?? It would be ridiculous to the point of laughter, if it wasn’t so gross. (And if his legislations and policies weren’t ruining the lives of so many innocent people.) And then what’s legitimately scary, I guess, is like….. how it’s not just his tweets. Because now suddenly you’ve got all these MAGA peeps getting hostile in your mentions. And you’ve got all these crazy blogs writing terrible things about this person you care so much about. And now they’re doing takedowns of Megan on Fox News, and who knows whatever else. It’s like an out-of-body experience, really — that’s how I’d describe it. That’s how it was for me.

But then Megan, man….. I’ll tell you what. You just cannot shake that girl. She’s going to do her thing, at her own damn speed, to her own damn rhythm, and she’s going to apologize to exactly NO ONE for it. So when all the Trump business started to go down last week, I mean — the fact that Megan just seemed completely unfazed? It’s strange to say, but that was probably the only normal thing about it. It’s not an act with her. It’s not a deflection. To me it’s more just like: Megan is at the boss level in the video game of knowing herself. She’s always been confident….. but that doesn’t mean she’s always been immune. She’s as sensitive as anyone — maybe more!! She’s just figured out how to harness that sensitivity.

And I think Megan’s sensitivity is what drives her to fight for others. I think it’s what drove her to take a knee. The Megan you’re seeing now? It’s the stronger version of the one who knelt in the first place. All the threats, all the criticism, all the fallout — coming out on the other side of that is what makes her seem so unfazed by the assholes of the world now.

I think in trying to help others, Megan has cemented who she is.

(4) A few 100% random and 100% unrelated facts, presented without commentary.

Donald Trump has never invited a WNBA champion to the White House.

In 2017, when South Carolina Women’s Basketball — coached by a black woman (the legend Dawn Staley) — won the national championship, they were not initially invited to the White House.

In 2019, when Baylor Women’s Basketball — coached by a white woman (also a legend, Kim Mulkey) — won the national championship, they were invited to the White House with no issues.

Stumbled across this cool website the other day. Check it out ?

( I had a long thing prepared here about the equal pay debate.

I was planning on “making some points” and “going in.”

But then I thought about it some more, and to tell you the truth….. I’m kind of done with that.

If you’re not on the right side of this fight, and advocating fiercely for equal pay — whether it’s in soccer, or basketball, or in any other industry, and across every intersectional boundary — then I just straight-up feel bad for you.

Because you’re sad, and wrong, and going down.

I feel that in my bones, increasingly, over these last several months — having seen my colleagues in the W show we mean business on a new CBA.

I feel that in my bones, increasingly, over these last couple of years — having seen our NBA counterparts start (START!) to stick their necks out for us, more and more, in solidarity and out of respect.

And I feel that in my bones, increasingly, right f*cking now — having seen these indestructible USWNT women stand up for themselves and (this seriously can’t be stressed enough) crack a LAWSUIT over the heads of U.S. Soccer while they go out and grind for a freaking World Cup.

Oh right and they literally are MORE PROFITABLE THAN THE MEN.

COOL!!!!!!!!!

TLDR: Pay us.

I wonder if Yellow Wall will troll this article as that poster trolled the one that Kyle Korver wrote.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Judge finalizes $25 million settlement for 'victims of Donald Trump's fraudulent university'

Trump University attendees are getting paid back.

A federal judge in the Southern District of California on Monday finalized a $25 million settlement to be paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel's decision came after an appeals court rejected arguments from a Florida woman who attended Trump University and said she wanted to pursue a separate lawsuit.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman called the settlement a victory for Trump U. "victims."

"Judge Curiel's order finalizing the $25 million Trump University settlement means that victims of Donald Trump's fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve," he said in a statement, adding that the amount surpassed the initial number the class-action suit initially negotiated.

"This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university," the statement added. "My office won't hesitate to hold those who commit fraud accountable, no matter how rich or powerful they may be."

Trump University was a for-profit series of courses about real estate and entrepreneurship that also pushed people to buy Trump's books.

The courses themselves claimed to teach attendees Donald Trump's secrets to success in real estate. Plaintiffs accused Trump University of false advertising.

Within weeks of Trump's ascending to the presidency, Trump University agreed to settle the claims for $21 million, plus another $4 million for the New York Attorney General's office.

Schneiderman first sued Trump in 2013 for allegedly defrauding thousands of Trump University attendees out of millions of dollars.

The $25 million settlement will recover about 90 percent of the costs of those who attended Trump University, which, as part of the settlement, did not admit to wrongdoing.

The Trump Organization spokesman said when the lawsuit was filed that he had "no doubt" Trump University would prevail if the case went to trial, but a "resolution of these matters" was a priority so Trump could focus on the running the country.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The look on Christine Lagarde's face is priceless.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

2020 Census will not include citizenship question, DOJ confirms

The Trump administration is dropping plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday just days after the Supreme Court described the rationale for the question as “contrived.”

The decision to back away from the controversial question was a victory for civil rights advocates concerned that the query would lead to an inaccurate count of immigrant communities that could skew political representation and federal funding.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the government had no choice but to proceed with printing the 2020 census forms without a citizenship question. Everyone in America counts in the census, and today’s decision means we all will,” attorney Dale Ho of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

The fate of the question has been the subject of legal and political wrangling since March 2018, when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced he planned to add it to the decennial survey, sparking a half-dozen lawsuits from states, cities, civil rights groups and others.

Just last week, President Trump responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling by saying he would seek to delay the census to give administration officials time to come up with a better explanation for why it should include a citizenship question.

Instead, government lawyers notified those challenging the question of the decision to proceed without it.

Critics of the question, including some inside the Census Bureau, say it could cause an undercount of millions of people in immigrant communities who would be afraid to return the form, leading to an inaccurate that could skew representation and apportionment in favor of Republican areas.

The government has said it needs the question in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act, and Ross initially told Congress he decided to add it in response to a December 2017 request from the Justice Department. But documents uncovered in the lawsuits suggested Ross was pushing for it months earlier, and that he pressed the Justice Department to issue the request.

Data from the census, which every U.S. household is required to fill out, is used by businesses and by the government to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in federal spending per year; it is also used to determine Congressional apportionment and redistricting. The form that goes to all households has not included a question related to citizenship since 1950.

The notice from the government came just hours before lawyers were scheduled for a conference call in a separate case challenging the Census question in Maryland.

Fuck off, Donnie.  Fuck off racists.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Facebook ads use models to portray actual supporters

A series of Facebook video ads for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign shows what appears to be a young woman strolling on a beach in Florida, a Hispanic man on a city street in Texas and a bearded hipster in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., all making glowing, voice-over endorsements of the president.

“I could not ask for a better president,” intones the voice during slow-motion footage of the smiling blonde called “Tracey from Florida.” A man labeled on another video as “TJ from Texas” stares into the camera as a voice says, “Although I am a lifelong Democrat, I sincerely believe that a nation must secure its borders.”

There’s just one problem: The people in the videos that ran in the past few months are all actually models in stock video footage produced far from the U.S. in France, Brazil and Turkey, and available to anyone online for a fee.

Though the 20-second videos include tiny disclaimers that say “actual testimonial, actor portrayal,” they raise the question why a campaign that can fill arenas with supporters would have to buy stock footage of models. It’s a practice that, under different circumstances, Trump himself would likely blast as “fake news.”

Trump campaign officials declined repeated requests for comment on Tuesday. Political experts say that, while it’s not unusual for stock footage to find its way into ads, a presidential campaign should have been more careful.

“As a producer, you want to control — you want people to look a certain way and you want them to sound a certain way,” said Jay Newell, a former cable TV executive who teaches advertising at Iowa State University. “The fact that the footage is from outside the U.S. makes it that much more embarrassing.”

There are plenty examples of such gaffes. In the last presidential primaries, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio ran an ad titled “Morning in America” with shots from Canada. A super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put ads on TV with video reportedly from the English countryside and workers from Southeast Asia.

Trump himself has used video from abroad before. His 2016 TV ad vowing to build a wall to keep out immigrants from Mexico showed people streaming across the border — but the shots of refugees were taken in Morocco.

The existence of the stock footage in this series of Trump ads, reported last week by Judd Legum for his website Popular Information , underscores an increasingly aggressive, targeted approach by the Trump campaign to reach out to voters on Facebook.

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which was behind the testimonial videos, is by far the biggest spender on political Facebook advertising, shelling out more than $2.7 million on 27,735 ads in the last 90 days alone, according to the social network’s running database of campaign ad spending. That’s in addition to the more than $1 million spent on more than 14,500 ads in the same period by Donald J. Trump for President Inc.

Trump’s campaign gets to such totals by running the same ads numerous times, all at slightly different audiences.

“Thomas from Washington,” featuring the bearded young man behind a coffee shop counter, appeared aimed at evangelicals, with the voice-over quote saying the president and his family are “in our prayers for strength and wisdom from God almighty.” ″TJ from Texas” seemed focused on Hispanic men. And “Tracey in Florida” was aimed specifically at a demographic in which Trump is historically weak — young women.

All are models for Turkish, Brazilian and French companies, respectively, that supply hundreds of photos and video to the popular site iStock run by Getty Images, which caters to publications, filmmakers and advertisers looking for professional, inexpensive imagery.

According to the site, licenses for the video clips used in the Trump ads can be had for as little as $170.

The blonde on the beach appears to be particularly prolific. Her photos and videos from the French company Tuto Photos in Roubaix, France, show her twirling in a wedding gown, walking spaniels in a meadow, getting her teeth checked at the dentist and working in a warehouse.

And the star of iStock’s “Bearded and tattooed hipster coffee shop owner posing” — also known as Trump’s “Thomas from Washington” — is a fixture on the videos and photos contributed by the company GM Stock out of Izmir, Turkey. His unmistakable beard and tats can be seen on the image site strolling with a woman on the beach, sitting by a campfire and pumping iron in the gym.

So what do these models think of being held up as model Trump supporters?

That’s not clear because none of the companies they’ve posed for would give a detailed comment to The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Getty Images would not identify the models, citing privacy concerns.

Fred Davis, a campaign consultant who’s produced ads for George W. Bush and other Republican presidential candidates, said the Trump campaign’s use of such footage is not surprising, given the volume of political ads on the internet these days.

“Whoever did this is probably 22 years old, and they’re going through pictures and thought, ‘This is a great picture,’” Davis said.

“This is a great shot of Thomas from Washington. It’s a shame it’s not Thomas from Washington.

#Resist