The Trump thread: All things Donald

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Trump Called Baltimore “Vermin Infested” While the Federal Government Fails to Clean Up Rodents in Subsidized Housing

Trump launched a multiday Twitter tirade last month directed at U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, sharing video footage of derelict Baltimore neighborhoods and asking why the Democratic congressman wasn’t doing more to address the “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” in his district.

Though Trump didn’t say so, some of the responsibility for any such conditions rests with his own administration. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has ultimate oversight of nearly 35,000 public housing and federally subsidized rental units in the city, many of which suffer from the squalor the president decried on social media. HUD has known for years of failing conditions in many of them but hasn’t taken steps to ramp up oversight as it has done in other regions, such as New York City.

“I’m afraid,” said Rochell Barksdale, sitting in her living room at McCulloh Homes, a public housing property that failed an inspection in March. Barksdale has asthma and other health issues exacerbated by mold. She’s allergic to roaches, which she now has in her kitchen.

“This is trauma,” she said, “living in public housing.”

HUD routinely inspects buildings like McCulloh Homes, where Barksdale has lived since 1999. The complex, owned and managed by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, failed four of its last five inspections.

The poor conditions in Baltimore’s public housing complexes predate the Trump administration, but they remain among the worst in the nation, according to an analysis of federal data, alongside housing in Gary, Indiana, and East St. Louis, Illinois. (Check inspection scores for subsidized housing complexes near you using ProPublica’s HUD Inspect tool.)

Despite improving scores, nearly half of Baltimore public housing developments failed their last inspection. Several properties — including J. Van Story Branch Senior Apartments, Rosemont Dukeland and McCulloh Homes — have failed repeatedly. Of the 10 largest public housing authorities nationwide, Baltimore has the worst failure rate.

The housing authority did not respond to interview requests for this story, but it noted in a 2018 report that it needs a staggering $800 million to repair roofs, upgrade interior units and fund other big-ticket capital improvements in Baltimore.

In a March letter to city Councilman John T. Bullock, the housing authority’s executive director, Janet Abrahams, highlighted rising inspection scores, improved security and a new pest control program targeting rats. The housing authority also has noted in recent annual plans that it has partnered with private developers to improve conditions in some older buildings or replace them. Last year, HUD awarded the authority $35 million in grants beyond its typical funding to assist in that effort.

Like other housing authorities across the country, Baltimore’s is grappling with aging buildings and limited resources to improve them after decades of congressional cuts that have spanned Republican and Democratic administrations. The housing authority has lost more than half its public housing stock since the 1990s, and thousands of people are on waitlists seeking housing assistance.

Charles Thomas, 68, lives in Gilmor Homes, a public housing complex where nearly all residents are black, in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood.

It’s the same neighborhood where police arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died from injuries he suffered while shackled in the back of a police van in 2015. Gray’s death sparked protests alleging police brutality and racist policies that marginalized black residents since the early 20th century.

After failing inspection in 2018, Gilmor passed this year. The improvement in the numbers doesn’t translate for many residents. An inspector working on behalf of HUD photographed broken doors and windows at Gilmor Homes, trash and large ruts in the yard where stormwater collects, according to HUD’s online database of inspection pictures.

For the last five years or so, Thomas has resigned himself to cold winters because of spotty radiators that don’t heat his home. Instead, he uses his oven, despite the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“You bundle up,” he said. “Rats live better.”

Trump’s comments came as Cummings, who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stepped up his criticism of the Trump administration over conditions at migrant detention centers on the U.S. border. Cummings’ district encompasses most of West Baltimore but also includes parts of suburban Baltimore and Howard counties.

The president’s tweets were widely condemned in Baltimore as racist and cruel for calling the majority black city “dangerous” and “filthy,” drawing scrutiny to a city without offering a plan to help.

A few days later, HUD Secretary Ben Carson traveled to Baltimore, where he lived during his years at Johns Hopkins Hospital and where he cemented his role as a world-renowned neurosurgeon.

The secretary decried the “animosity” that keeps people from working together.

As a doctor, Carson said he worried about sending young patients back to blighted homes with vermin, lead paint and mold, where their health could worsen. As HUD secretary, he said he has championed programs that allow public housing administrations to partner with private companies to rehabilitate blighted buildings and improve residents’ quality of life.

One program, Rental Assistance Demonstration, has attracted applications from buildings across the greater Baltimore region. Referred to as RAD, the program allows housing authorities to convert their buildings from traditional public housing to those supported by rental vouchers or project-based rental assistance. That, in turn, allows them to borrow funds to make repairs, or partner with private developers to seek federal low-income housing tax credits or other state and local grants.

The Baltimore housing authority has already converted or is exploring possible conversions at more than 20 properties citywide, but in its 2019 annual plan to HUD, it reported issues with financing a conversion at two developments.

To the south, the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis will convert one of its oldest and most troubled properties, Newtowne 20, under the program. HACA recently chose a partner to convert a second property, Morris H. Blum Senior Apartments.

But conversion is never a sure bet. Last year, the Annapolis authority failed to win lucrative tax credits for Newtowne 20 and was forced to cobble together the funding through a patchwork of state and federal funding programs.

Proponents of RAD, including developers, say it is flexible and responsive to community needs, but critics say there’s less accountability when problems arise.

In Baltimore last week and at other stops across the country, Carson also touted “opportunity zones” as a big part of the solution for building new affordable housing. These zones are tax-incentive districts created by the tax reform law Trump signed in December 2017. Supporters say they are designed to encourage investment in distressed places.

But experts say most activity is being directed into gentrifying areas that are already slated for development.

There’s little evidence that what’s going up in these zones is helping to close the wealth gap between black and white citizens, said Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has extensively studied the disinvestment in majority African American cities.

“I think that Ben Carson is listening to the private industry and not everyday people who live in these communities, including black and brown business owners,” Perry said.

Efforts to eviscerate federal blight-fighting and affordable housing programs have been underway for years. The Trump administration has sought to slash rental subsidies as well as programs that fund public housing repairs, build new affordable housing and improve municipal infrastructure systems. But members of Congress have pushed back and housing authorities have actually received more funding during Trump’s presidency.

Lost in the president’s Twitter missives is that Baltimore, in more recent history, has been at the forefront of attempts to unwind deeply rooted patterns of housing segregation that have led to poverty, disinvestment and despair.

For instance, Baltimore led the way in implementing a program created in the 1990s that sought to reduce concentrated poverty by replacing sprawling public housing complexes and high-rises with less dense, mixed-income developments.

Then tenants filed a lawsuit in 1995 against HUD, Baltimore and its housing authority, claiming they had violated the Fair Housing Act by concentrating African American public housing residents in poor neighborhoods with few resources. The parties settled, and in 2015, the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership began overseeing a program to counsel residents and help them choose new places to live. That mobility program has helped some 5,000 families move, said Adria Crutchfield, the partnership’s executive director.

But the fact that so many problems remain underscores how deeply entrenched they are.

While some federally subsidized buildings owned by private or nonprofit landlords have garnered higher scores, residents report similar issues at many of them: persistent mold, rodent and cockroach infestations, plumbing leaks and safety concerns.

Tiffany Ralph, 47, walked around her apartment in Bolton House, a high-rise apartment complex in northwest Baltimore, pointing to sticky traps and holes plugged with steel wool. She’s used Brillo pads and caulk to close up holes and stop mice and rats from getting in.

In the course of fixing a mysterious leak in her bathroom last fall, a plumber left a gaping hole in the drywall behind her toilet, allowing roaches and rodents to invade Ralph’s apartment. She closed the door for the night and sealed it off using painter’s tape. All night, she lay awake listening to mice skitter and stick to the tape, trying to get in.

An inspector from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City eventually determined a corroded pipe was leaking raw sewage into Ralph’s bathroom.

Bolton House last scored 95 out of 100, a high rating.

“The best way to put it would be horrible,” Ralph said of the conditions in her building. “We have seen … our environment within the building take a rapid nosedive, and it’s been horrible.”

Edgewood Management oversees the building. Executive Vice President Michael Leithead, through a spokeswoman, said the company is committed to a “safe, healthy and affordable community at Bolton House.”

Separately, in 2017, investigations by ProPublica and by The Baltimore Sun examined conditions for tenants in Baltimore area rental complexes owned by a real estate company of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The investigations found properties in disrepair and whose owners often sued residents who fell behind in rent. Some of those tenants use federal vouchers to help pay their rent. (Those properties are not subject to the same inspections.)

HUD officials acknowledge housing authorities have had to do more with less, while aging housing stock declines.

Brian Sullivan, an agency spokesman, said HUD is in the middle of revamping its inspection process, which has become an ineffective measure of safe and healthy housing. After 20 years, some landlords are maintaining properties to pass the test, addressing cosmetic issues while leaving underlying problems unchecked.

Trump, in his tweets, said that if Cummings spent more time in Baltimore, “maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.” But advocates say both Congress and presidential administrations have a responsibility to address the deplorable conditions in public housing.

Gregory Countess, an attorney with Maryland Legal Aid, has worked with public housing residents in the city for years. He said he sees a system that, year after year, reduces the amount of money available to fix housing that only gets older.

“Not only is it just a failure in the sense of leadership of these agencies, it’s a failure that is really an indictment of the federal government — both Congress and the administration — in the role that they’re taking.

“If they thought it was really important, they would treat it that way.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Scoop: Inside Trump's strange pen-pal diplomacy with Justin Trudeau

President Trump has sent highly unusual, Sharpie-written notes to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at least twice, Axios has learned.

One missive was so odd, the Canadian ambassador double-checked with the White House to be sure it wasn't a prank. In at least one instance, Trudeau also wrote to Trump. The exchange of handwritten notes, never before reported, was confirmed by several sources with firsthand knowledge.

The diplomatic missives include:

A torn-out Bloomberg Businessweek cover featuring a portrait of Justin Trudeau.
A back-and-forth about U.S.-Canada trade figures that culminated in Trudeau sending Trump a printout of the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative with a smiley face beside the U.S. government figure showing America has a trade surplus with Canada (contrary to Trump's claims).
Context: The May 1–7, 2017, issue of Bloomberg Businessweek — featuring a picture of Trudeau headlined "The Anti-Trump" — caught President Trump's attention, according to 4 sources with direct knowledge. Trump tore the cover off the magazine and wrote on it, in silver Sharpie, something to the effect of "Looking good! Hope it's not true!" according to these sources.

Before the White House mailed this diplomatic correspondence, it went through the normal clearance process inside the National Security Council. While some White House staff thought it was not the appropriate way to communicate with a foreign leader, they ultimately figured "it was done in good fun and would be interpreted as positive outreach," said a source with direct knowledge of what happened. So the White House mailed the magazine cover to the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
The Canadian ambassador thought it was a prank, according to 2 sources familiar with the situation. He called the White House to check, and a White House official confirmed to the ambassador that the note was real, one of these sources said.
Months later, on Dec. 8, 2017, President Trump falsely told a rally crowd in Pensacola, Florida, that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada. Around that same time, Trump also mailed Trudeau a document purporting to show that the U.S. had a trade deficit with Canada, according to a source with direct knowledge.

Trump wrote in Sharpie on the document: "Not good!!" or something to that effect, the source recalled. Trump's document only mentioned America's deficit in the trade of goods and ignored its surplus in services (the two combined would gave the U.S. its overall surplus).
A few weeks later, Trump received a handwritten letter from Trudeau. The note, on Trudeau's official stationery marked by the Maple Leaf, began with a friendly tone, but ended with a drop of acid.

"Dear Donald," Trudeau wrote in the letter dated Dec. 20, 2017, according to a source with direct knowledge of its contents, which 2 other sources confirmed. "It's been a busy year! Enjoy the Christmas holidays — you deserve it."
"One thing," Trudeau added. "You gave a great speech in Pensacola, but you were slightly off on the balance of trade with Canada. USTR says so! All the best for 2018, Justin."
The second page of the letter brought the kicker. Trudeau enclosed a printout of Canada's informational page from the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Trudeau underlined the section on the USTR website, which at the time reported that "the U.S. goods and services trade surplus with Canada was $12.5 billion in 2016." Trudeau circled the $12.5 billion and drew a cheeky little smiley face next to it, according to a source with direct knowledge.
A Canadian government official responded to this reporting: "We're not going to comment on whether or what paper was exchanged between our 2 countries. There was a lot of back and forth. That said, it is certainly true that there were disagreements between our 2 countries about the figures, and we repeatedly pointed to USTR and U.S. Commerce's own figures. On your second point (the Bloomberg cover), no comment, but we don't deny it."

Why this matters: The U.S.-Canadian relationship is, in normal times, low-friction. But not under Trump, who views Trudeau as an irritant at best. In a conversation in the White House last year, Trump told aides he thought Canada was "the worst" country to negotiate with. "Who would think? Canada?" Trump said.

Trump now says very little about Trudeau, according to an adviser, and believes he and his trade representative Bob Lighthizer got the better of the Canadians in their trade negotiations.
Behind the scenes: Trump privately refers to Trudeau as a "wise guy," per sources with direct knowledge. He describes Trudeau as young and cocky, and he resents it when Trudeau comments on American politics.

Trump has gleefully recounted to aides how he threatened the Canadians with auto tariffs. He says it got him a better deal on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Trump has also privately described Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland as "very nasty," according to senior administration officials.
Trump was pleased with the optics of the G7 last year, an adviser said. Trump says he dominated Trudeau there, the adviser added, and loves the viral photo of himself sitting with his arms crossed as world leaders hover over him. Trump also relished leaving the summit early — snub to Trudeau, who Trump said had treated him with disrespect.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The big picture: The president is in Year 3 of his relationships with foreign leaders, and in some cases they've changed substantially. Trump's bromance with France's 41-year-old leader Emmanuel Macron has faded, and Trump privately places Macron in a similar “wise guy” category as the 47-year-old Trudeau.

Last week, Trump chided Macron on Twitter for "purporting" to represent the U.S. in conversations with Iran.
Trump has also hammered China with escalating tariffs and increasingly tough rhetoric — a significant change from his more frequent emphasis on his close personal relationship with President Xi Jinping in Year 1.

#Resist

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INVESTIGATING TRUMP FAMILY SELF-DEALING, THE D.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS SUBPOENAED DOCUMENTS FROM MELANIA’S FORMER RIGHT-HAND WOMAN

The summer swelter lingered in the swamp around President Donald Trump’s Washington in late July. Democrats in Congress continued to mull whether or not they would move to impeach him; Republicans, habitually, turned a blind eye to his hateful rhetoric and compulsive Twitter attacks. In New York the stock market teetered as traders awaited the administration’s next move on tariffs; prosecutors in the Southern District of New York appeared, without great logic or transparency, to close its campaign-finance investigation into Trump’s hush money payments without indicting anyone else involved apart from his longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who, by July, was more than two months into a three-year sentence at a federal facility in the Catskills.

While Cohen reads through the prison library and works out with “The Situation” in the Otisville Correctional Facility’s gym, his former neighbor on Park Avenue Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was having a different sort of summer. Last month, Wolkoff received a subpoena from the Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office, requesting documents related to President Trump’s inauguration, which Wolkoff had a heavy hand in planning. The $107 million event has been under investigation for months, including by federal prosecutors in New York and New Jersey, for profligate spending and questions about foreign donations. The latest subpoena appears to be probing potential self-dealing by the Trump Organization and members of the president’s family, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Wolkoff complied with the request, according to these sources, by the July 26 deadline, which asked her to turn over records involving the inaugural event, the president’s family and associates, and expenditures by the inaugural committee that could shine a light on whether the nonprofit group provided private benefits to the Trump Organization. The attorney general appears to be particularly interested in payments being made through the inaugural committee to Trump-owned businesses, and whether there was a fair bidding process for contractors.

In response to a request for comment, Wolkoff said she signed a nondisclosure agreement and could not comment on any investigation, subpoena, or her cooperation. “If the [Presidential Inaugural Committee] wants to release me from this obligation, I would be able to speak freely without the fear of legal or financial repercussions,” she said in a statement. “Otherwise, I am regrettably unable to provide substantial comment.” Her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond.

The gulf between what Wolkoff knows and what she is publicly able to say can be measured in tens of thousands of documents, email exchanges, meeting minutes, and phone calls. She has, after all, known first lady Melania Trump for years, making her one of a small circle of confidants. As I reported earlier this year, the two were close enough that she would spend the night in the residence at the White House with the first lady. (When Melania floated the idea of calling her official anti-bullying platform “Be Best,” Wolkoff advised her against the name, telling her that it sounded “illiterate.”) A few days after the election, the Trumps tapped Wolkoff, who previously ran the Met ball with enough militaristic precision that it earned her the nickname “the general” around the Vogue office, to plan all the major events for the inauguration. Coming in with little political know-how, she had a matter of weeks to put together dozens of events with: a budget that kept shifting with little explanation; an inaugural chairman, Tom Barrack, and his deputy, Rick Gates, whom she felt were never fully above board with her; and an incoming first family that, for egotistical and business reasons, wanted their hands in all the planning, their company hosting a number of events, and their faces carefully arranged within the frame of all the historic moments that would be captured throughout that weekend.

Wolkoff’s concerns over how the money was being spent, whether or not the Trumps were self-dealing, and if the Trump kids had their dad’s best interests at heart were grave enough that she called Cohen in the midst of it to air her grievances. Cohen, true to form, recorded the phone call with his friend. That recording was one of the many such calls federal agents swept up when they executed a search warrant on his homes and office last spring. Almost exactly a year ago, Cohen called Wolkoff to let her know prosecutors in the Southern District had the recording. By last October, the United States attorney for the Southern District signed off on a grand-jury subpoena, asking her to produce documents related to the inaugural committee. She cooperated with the investigation, sharing thousands of documents and emails she had saved and painstakingly organized in the time since she left her position as an adviser to the first lady in the East Wing in the winter of 2018.

The House Intelligence Committee followed up with a request of its own. In April, chairman Adam Schiff sent Wolkoff’s attorney a letter asking her to turn over information related to efforts by foreign individuals or entities to support or influence Trump’s campaign, transition, and administration. Schiff, who asked Wolkoff to participate in a voluntary interview, was particularly interested in any communications involving Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign governments. Schiff also probed for documents involving communications between Trump businesses, Trump family members (including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump), and foreign officials, along with inauguration guest lists, budgets, invoices, and efforts to conceal the identity of donors.

The subpoena issued by the D.C. attorney general focused in on potential self-dealing from the inaugural committee to Trump-owned businesses. That narrowed lens seems to stem, in part, from emails between Wolkoff, employees of the Trump Organization, members of the Trump inaugural committee, and the Trump family made public in news reports earlier this year. As I previously reported, both Wolkoff and Gates stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a stone’s throw away from the White House, throughout the inaugural planning. In all, the Trump International Hotel was paid more than $1.5 million in inaugural funds. (Wolkoff’s contract states that the inaugural committee would reimburse her company for expenses connected to the performance of its work.)

During the course of planning, Wolkoff had corresponded with Ivanka about the cost of using the Trump Hotel for events leading up to the swearing-in ceremony. On December 10, 2016, a Trump Organization employee sent an estimate for a ballroom rental and food-and-beverage minimum to use the Trump Hotel space for eight days. The price she quoted was $3.6 million, according to an email. A week later, Gates emailed Ivanka about the cost. In this exchange, first published last December by ProPublica and WNYC, Wolkoff flagged her concern. “These events are in PE’s [the president-elect’s] honor at his hotel and one of them is for family and close friends. Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” she wrote. (Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Ivanka’s counsel Abbe Lowell, said in a statement at the time: “When contacted by someone working on the inauguration, Ms. Trump passed the inquiry on to a hotel official and said only that any resulting discussions should be at a ‘fair market rate.’ Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.”)

The new subpoena represents a possible new avenue that could ensnare members of Trump world who have previously evaded charges, despite a number of investigations and probes across federal prosecutorial districts and committees on Capitol Hill. Special Counsel Robert Mueller declined to indict Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner, for instance, despite their involvement in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. No one from the Trump Organization apart from Cohen has been charged in the campaign-finance investigation, despite the fact that prosecutors in the SDNY stated that the payments were made at the direction of Trump and Don Jr. signed a check that reimbursed Cohen for the payment he made to Stormy Daniels. The government said earlier this summer that the investigation had run its course.

Gates, who had a front-row seat, alongside Wolkoff, to all the inaugural activities, has been cooperating with the government for a year and a half, and is set to testify in several trials this fall. He has not spoken publicly since he testified in Paul Manafort’s trial last summer, which resulted in a judge sentencing him to a combined seven and a half years behind bars. Wolkoff, meanwhile, has had to remain publicly quiet, as long as her nondisclosure agreement holds.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act

The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation’s bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator from extinction.

The changes will make it harder to consider the effects of climate change on wildlife when deciding whether a given species warrants protection. They would most likely shrink critical habitats and, for the first time, would allow economic assessments to be conducted when making determinations.

The rules also make it easier to remove a species from the endangered species list and weaken protections for threatened species, a designation that means they are at risk of becoming endangered.

Overall, the new rules would very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said the changes would modernize the Endangered Species Act and increase transparency in its application. “The act’s effectiveness rests on clear, consistent and efficient implementation,” he said in a statement Monday.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement the revisions “fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals.”

The new rules are expected to appear in the Federal Register this week and will go into effect 30 days after that.

Environmental organizations denounced the changes as a disaster for imperiled wildlife.

David J. Hayes, who served as a deputy interior secretary in the Obama administration and is now executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at the New York University School of Law, said the changes would “straitjacket the scientists to take climate change out of consideration” when determining how to best protect wildlife. “We all know that climate change is now the greatest threat ever to hundreds of species,” Mr. Hayes said.

A recent United Nations assessment, some environmentalists noted, has warned that human pressures are poised to drive one million species into extinction and that protecting land and biodiversity is critical to keep greenhouse gas emissions in check.
Climate change, a lack of environmental stewardship and mass industrialization have all contributed to the enormous expected global nature loss, the United Nations report said.

Ever since President Richard M. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law in 1973, it has been the main United States legislation for protecting fish, plants and wildlife, and has acted as a safety net for species on the brink of extinction. The peregrine falcon, the humpback whale, the Tennessee purple coneflower and the Florida manatee all would very likely have disappeared without it, scientists say.

Republicans have long sought to narrow the scope of the law, saying that it burdens landowners, hampers industry and hinders economic growth. Mr. Bernhardt wrote in an op-ed last summer that the act places an “unnecessary regulatory burden” on companies.

They also make the case that the law is not reasonable because species are rarely removed from the list. Since the law was passed, more than 1,650 have been listed as threatened or endangered, while just 47 have been delisted because their populations rebounded.

Over the past two years Republicans made a major legislative push to overhaul the law. Despite holding a majority in both houses of Congress, though, the proposals were never taken up in the Senate. With Democrats now in control of the House, there is little chance of those bills passing.

The Trump administration’s revisions to the regulations that guide the implementation of the law, however, mean opponents of the Endangered Species Act are still poised to claim their biggest victory in decades.

One of the most controversial changes removes longstanding language that prohibits the consideration of economic factors when deciding whether a species should be protected.

Under the current law, such determinations must be made solely based on science, “without reference to possible economic or other impacts of determination.”

Gary Frazer, the assistant director for endangered species with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said that phrase had been removed for reasons of “transparency.” He said the change leaves open the possibility of conducting economic analyses for informational purposes, but that decisions about listing species would still be based exclusively on science.

Environmental groups saw a danger in that. “There can be economic costs to protecting endangered species,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization. But, he said, “If we make decisions based on short-term economic costs, we’re going to have a whole lot more extinct species.”

The new rules also give the government significant discretion in deciding what is meant by the term “foreseeable future.” That’s a semantic change with far-reaching implications, because it enables regulators to disregard the effects of extreme heat, drought, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change that may occur several decades from now.

When questioned about that change and its implications in the era of climate change, Mr. Frazer said the agency wanted to avoid making “speculative” decisions far into the future.

Among the animals at risk from this change, Mr. Caputo listed a few: Polar bears and seals that are losing crucial sea ice; whooping cranes whose migration patterns are shifting because of temperature changes; and beluga whales that will have to dive deeper and longer to find food in a warmer Arctic.

Jonathan Wood, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative group that has represented landowners in opposing endangered species designations, said he believed the changes would improve the law by simplifying the regulatory process and making the law less punitive.

“It’s a shift away from conflict in favor of more collaboration and cooperation,” he said.

#Resist

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This is how to respond to Trump’s conspiratorial lunacy

This is how CNN’s State of the Union began on Sunday:

JAKE TAPPER: Hello. I’m Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is appalled. We begin this morning with a retweet from the president of the United States, not a message about healing or uniting the country one week after two horrifying massacres, not about the victims of those tragedies.

Instead, President Trump using his massive Twitter platform, 63 million followers, to spread a deranged conspiracy theory, tying the death of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in prison to the president's former political rivals the Clintons.

I’m not going to show you the tweet, but the spokesperson for former president Bill Clinton responded to the president retweeting it, saying — quote — “Ridiculous and, of course, not true, and Donald Trump knows it. Has he triggered the 25th Amendment yet?” . . .

President Trump has also given voice to the lie that the migrant and refugee crisis at the southern border of the U.S. is a plot by Jewish billionaire George Soros to fund a — quote — “invasion.”

That is a conspiracy theory that was the motive for mass slaughter in Pittsburgh and El Paso.

This is no longer just irresponsible and indecent. It is dangerous.

Joining me now from his hometown of El Paso, after having canceled his campaign events for the week to deal with the mourning citizens in his city, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke. . .

What was your reaction when you saw the tweets?

BETO O’ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is another example of our president using this position of public trust to attack his political enemies with unfounded conspiracy theories, and also to try to force you and me and all of us to focus on his bizarre behavior, instead of the fact that we just lost 22 people in this community, nine people in Dayton, Ohio; we’re seeing an epidemic of gun violence every single day in this country. . .

He’s changing the conversation. And if we allow him to do that, then we will never be able to focus on the true problems, of which he is a part, and make sure that we get to the solutions, now, whether that means legislation that keeps guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have it.

Credit Tapper with not allowing Trump to use his show as a megaphone for Trump’s insane conspiracy-mongering and reminding viewers that the president feeds conspiracy theories all the time, some of which are the source of inspiration or reaffirmation for violent extremists.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) appeared later in the show. When asked about Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein tweet, Booker responded, “You know, this is just more recklessness. What he’s doing is dangerous.” Booker continued: “He’s giving life to not just conspiracy theories, but really whipping people up into anger and worse against different people in this country. And so this is a tired way that the president does. He’s been using the Clintons as a means for a lot of his false accusations.” Booker reminded us that the Pizzagate conspiracy was another violence-inducing episode. “We see people’s lives being threatened because this president whips up hatred. This is a very dangerous president that we have right now, trying to divide us against each other and really using the same tactics and the same language, not just of white supremacists, but also using the same tactics and languages of the Russians, if you look at the intelligence reports about how they’re coming at our democracy.”

O’Rourke and Booker both made the key points that any responsible official should make. There is a simple formula for responding to these episodes: 1) Reaffirm that they are baseless, crazy theories; 2) Remind Americans that as president, Trump has access to the very best intelligence but instead prefers to spread dark, false conspiracy theories; 3) Trump’s microphone is the loudest in the world, and whether he intends to, his words will stir some unstable and/or evil people to act; and 4) In putting Americans at risk, he violates his oath, and if he believes in what he’s saying, he is also mentally unfit to lead.

The media can go further than these statements. For starters, when a spokesperson such as the notoriously untruthful Kellyanne Conway comes on air to say she “just wants everything to be investigated,” the host has an obligation to call her out for putting words in Trump’s mouth and to compel her (i.e., do not move on with the interview) to admit he is propagating unfounded conspiracy theories. It is also incumbent on the media to grill every Republican who comes on: Is the president doing harm? Do you denounce his actions? Is a president who does this fit to serve?

Finally, as Tapper did, media outlets have to think long and hard about repeating Trump’s conspiracies theories. They also need to consider whether it is responsible to, in essence, republish Trump’s lies and his excuses for lies by giving a platform to his apologists. It is irresponsible to turn over a readership or viewership to apologists who make blatantly false analogies (e.g., claiming Dayton’s shooting was motivated by left-wing conspiracy theories).

Media organizations are not “taking sides” when they exclude false information, information that can be dangerous to boot. This is the trap of false balance. There is no balance required when it comes to “Did the Clintons kill Epstein?” or “Did Trump actually help propagate conspiracy theories?” There are factual answers (no and yes, respectively), and a responsible media organization does not allow an apologist to suggest that we really don’t know about those Clintons. A legitimate news organization does not provide a forum for hacks to lie that the president “just wants everything to be investigated.”

In short, the story here is threefold. The president is irresponsibly fanning incendiary conspiracy theories and white nationalist tropes; his aides won’t acknowledge that, so they lie about what he’s saying; and Republicans are too cowardly to denounce him or question his mental fitness. With Trump, his media mouthpieces and social media armies spreading so much misinformation that feeds the atmosphere, the mainstream media has an outsized obligation to provide a true accounting of events. If not, they become complicit.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims over 928 days

Trump’s proclivity for spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods has continued at a remarkable pace. As of Aug. 5, his 928th day in office, he had made 12,019 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president has uttered.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26, and he has been averaging about 20 fishy claims a day since then. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged about 13 such claims a day.

About one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 190 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

False or misleading claims about trade, the economy and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign each account for about 10 percent of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated.

Trump has falsely claimed 186 times that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by the president’s trade wars.

On 166 occasions, he has claimed the United States has “lost” money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

Trump has falsely said 162 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised that it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president’s rallies.

The president’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. More than 18 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded more than 300 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. He also now has earned 23 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and that have been repeated at least 20 times.

Even as Trump’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Washington Post Fact Checker poll published in December. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.

The award-winning database website, created by graphics reporter Leslie Shapiro, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the president has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. For this update, we have added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

This shit is so indicative of the kinds of fanatics that will think the worst of the Clintons, and Obamas, and yet overlook the worst about the Trumps.

What about Ivanka's Emails?  Nothing.  Not a damned thing.

The Hairpeice in Chief has ties to Pedophile's Paradise Island?  The Clintons had him killed.

Not like Goldfinger owns any properties in Brighton Beach.

[Athos_131]

U.S. Budget Deficit Already Exceeds Last Year’s Total Figure

The U.S. fiscal deficit has already exceeded the full-year figure for last year, as spending growth outpaces revenue.

The gap grew to $866.8 billion in the first 10 months of the fiscal year, up 27% from the same period a year earlier, the Treasury Department said in its monthly budget report on Monday. That’s wider than last fiscal year’s shortfall of $779 billion -- which was the largest federal deficit since 2012.

So far in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, a revenue increase of 3% hasn’t kept pace with a 8% rise in spending. While still a modest source of income, tariffs imposed by the Trump administration helped almost double customs duties to $57 billion in the period.

Republican tax cuts, increased federal spending and an aging population have contributed to the fiscal strains, though the GOP says tax reform enacted last year will spur economic growth and lift government revenue. Corporate income-tax receipts rose 3% between October and July, while individual income taxes gained 1%, according to Treasury data.

The annual budget deficit is expected to exceed $1 trillion starting in 2022, the Congressional Budget Office has said. The non-partisan agency is scheduled to update its latest 10-year budget and economic forecasts on Aug. 21.

For the month of July, the budget deficit was $119.7 billion, compared with $76.9 billion a year earlier, according to Treasury. Still, “July 2019 was a record receipts month, and the month is generally a deficit month -- 63 of the last 65 times,” a senior Treasury official said in an accompanying statement.

#Resist
[/quote]

[Athos_131]

At rally, Trump seethes with elite contempt for Real Americans

The candidate for president was seething with disdain for a large swath of Real Americans. The candidate scoffed at their suffering. The candidate oozed with haughty superciliousness as he wrote off all those Americans as unworthy of concern or outreach. All the while, the candidate’s audience, cloistered in their bubble, insulated from those Americans and their travails, tittered with glee.

I’m talking about President Trump, who mocked Baltimore for its high murder rate at his reelection rally in Ohio on Thursday night. “The homicide rate in Baltimore is significantly higher than El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,” Trump scoffed.

“Gimme a place that you think is pretty bad,” Trump said, employing audience engagement with the swagger of a stand-up comedian. Someone shouted out “Afghanistan,” and Trump ran with it.

As the Baltimore Sun put it, Trump treated the city as a “punch line.”

We will now see a throng of pundits, columnists and even neutral reporters tearing into Trump for demonstrating elitist disdain for untold numbers of Americans, for mocking their culture and way of life and for dismissing them as no longer worthy of even minimal efforts to win over, yes?

This episode brought to mind the extraordinary outrage that greeted Hillary Clinton’s remarks last year about the high economic productivity of Clinton counties. “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product,” Clinton said, describing them as “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”

Trump’s rally also brought to mind the fury that rained down on Clinton when she said in 2016, “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Permit me to re-litigate those episodes because they say something about a very deep imbalance that is all around us right now.

In both those cases, Clinton was pilloried far and wide for demonstrating elite contempt for her fellow Americans and their way of life. Yet in both, Clinton was referencing actual existing phenomena and proposing that they require our attention.

In the first, you might fault Clinton for being inartful. But there actually is a large economic divergence underway between big, diverse metropolitan areas that are reaping gains from digitalization and globalization, and left-behind rural and small-town communities. Clinton actually did win the economically thriving areas, and this really does have serious ramifications for our politics, exacerbating resentments and geographic polarization.

This is also a problem that has led progressive economists to propose agendas for dealing with it. That includes Clinton herself, who has also spoken to the social problems generated by this divergence.

In the second of those, it’s actually true that, if we are going to address the climate crisis, coal will have to be eased out. But Clinton spoke sympathetically to the consequences of this in the very next sentences, noting that we “don’t want to forget” coal miners. And as David Roberts notes, she had produced a sweeping plan to help manage their inevitable displacement.

The crime in Baltimore that Trump mocked is also a real phenomenon, of course. But here’s the crucial difference: Clinton actually wasn’t showing disdain for rural, non-metropolitan America — at best, she was being inartful, while proposing actual solutions to the problems she highlighted — while Trump actually is showing disdain for urban America. He is even openly flaunting it:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1157259424794324992

Kudos to CNN’s Abby D. Phillip, who found a way to register this imbalance. “Imagine a president riffing on the opioid overdose rate in suburban or rural America to laughter from his supporters,” Phillip noted. “You probably can’t.”

The press does focus regularly on Trump’s racism. As Brian Beutler notes, the media has genuinely struggled to move past journalistic conventions that editorially constrained forthright descriptions of that racism.

But Trump’s racism is rarely discussed in terms of the contempt and loathing it shows toward millions of living, breathing Americans, or the impact it has on them.

A deep imbalance
Here’s the bottom line: Big news organizations often seem to editorially privilege the difficulties and even the feelings of Midwestern whites. I can’t cite a study that proves this. But you see it constantly.

The genre of newspaper writing that sends reporters into diners and dives down the road from rusting factories to find out what Trump voters think of whatever just happened has literally become the stuff of parody, as Alexandra Petri demonstrates well.

When Trump attacked four nonwhite congresswomen, telling the country they aren’t really part of the American nation, one news organization sent reporters out to discover what Midwestern white Trump voters thought about it. No, really.

This lopsidedness has seeped into coverage of the Democratic primaries. The candidates are proposing agendas to address structural racism and mitigate the human toll being inflicted on immigrant communities. This is constantly described as potentially alienating to Trump country — Midwestern white voters.

Whether that’s true, or a matter for Democrats to worry about, is beside the point. What’s notable is that this is often the prism through which those policy debates are viewed. One news account subtly took Democrats to task for spending “time on issues facing people of color,” which would leave “auto workers and union members” — Midwestern white voters — “disappointed.”

There is a genuine argument among Democrats over how aggressively to pursue Midwestern whites. But much of this is intra-party debating over how to build a winning coalition. It does not constitute the contemptuous writing off of those parts of the country. Indeed, some candidates have rolled out plans to address their challenges.

By contrast, Trump is not just writing off large chunks of the country as unworthy of campaign outreach. He’s writing them off as president, openly signaling to his America that he recognizes zero institutional obligation to be president of that other America. As Jonathan Chait notes, Trump has “never adopted even the pose of representing the entire country.”

Our discourse has not figured out a way to faithfully convey this deep imbalance.

#Resist

[Lois]

If the Clintons are such all powerful murderers, why isn't Trump dead yet?

[joan1984]

If the Clintons are such all powerful murderers, why isn't Trump dead yet?

Need to ask Seth Rich, I think...

[psiberzerker]

Need to ask Seth Rich, I think...

So, you don't know.  I'm sure you have some evidence in the Seth Rich case, too?

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Lois]

If the Clintons are such all powerful murderers, why isn't Trump dead yet?

Need to ask Seth Rich, I think...

Actually, The Seth Rich murdered by the Clintons conspiracy theory was tracked back to the Russians.  It was first published by RT and then picked up and spread far and wide by Faux News and other right-wing-nuts.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/452157-russias-foreign-intelligence-service-secretly-planted-fake-report-that-seth

[joan1984]

Those rascally Russians again. Well, when those Russians respond, and show up for their day in court, as ordered by the Special Counsel, we will all see...
  I should have known the Clintons could not have been involved in anything.

If the Clintons are such all powerful murderers, why isn't Trump dead yet?

Need to ask Seth Rich, I think...

Actually, The Seth Rich murdered by the Clintons conspiracy theory was tracked back to the Russians.  It was first published by RT and then picked up and spread far and wide by Faux News and other right-wing-nuts.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/452157-russias-foreign-intelligence-service-secretly-planted-fake-report-that-seth

[psiberzerker]

So, the Russians who're illegally here, you're fine with them?  I'm sure it has nothing to do with color.

[joan1984]

Anyone who is illegally here should be removed from here. Period.
Aliens who are legally here should be better tracked, regulated, insuring their activity is consistent with US Law and with the Visa they were issued.

Just as a parolee is contacted, expected to respond, expected to be employed, if that is what his status calls for, same for Visa covered Aliens. The same as Americans who obtain a visa and work permit overseas, are monitored. We pay people to work in the organizations who are to perform such accountability checks, and the activity of said employees may need to be monitored, if they are not able to keep track, keep us safe from their positions.

ICE needs to beef up the numbers of internal enforcement Officers, and Admin personnel, in order to effectively see that the law, and visa intent is followed.
Employers of undocumented persons must become unwelcome as a Company.

Whatever stands in the way of legal employment of documented employees, who have the Visa status, or other legal standing, and are not taking away job opportunity from Citizens and legal Residents eligible for such positions, needs to be fully addressed, laws fully enforced, and known to be enforced, in order to deter temptation of anyone to present themselves here, expecting a job.

The 'chicken industry' which is said to REQUIRE Illegal Aliens in order to do the work they do, needs to get legal, or get out of business.

Can local or even Federal Government help undocumented people to get legal?
Of course some could help a lot. Get those folks 'documented', so they may comply with the law. When the 'documentation' shows the person is not legally here, then we need to remove that person, or address the legality issues in a way to fix the situation.

Lax enforcement of law is not a good thing. And, laws need to expire, be time limited retroactively if needed, so as to clear our books of the redundancy of laws which are never or seldom enforced, simply used if at all, as a trip wire when true lawbreaking cannot be demonstrated, and "we" wish a person off the streets for some short term reason.

Lots of things need 'repair', and we need our politicians, who earn money to do such activity, must be held to account by Voters, or displaced by term limits to get the dead wood out of the way, replaced with new office holders eager and able to do their proper jobs.

So, the Russians who're illegally here, you're fine with them?  I'm sure it has nothing to do with color.

[psiberzerker]

Anyone who is illegally here should be removed from here.

Then turn your attention to the border that's actually open.

Aliens who are legally here should be better tracked, regulated, insuring their activity is consistent with US Law and with the Visa they were issued.

Then provide Visas, and allow Amnesty.  It's a hell of a lot cheaper to make refugees American Citizens than to track millions of people, constantly.  You want to reduce government spending?  Then don't suggest a police state for millions of people based on their nation of origin, make them tax-paying Americans.

ICE needs to beef up the numbers of internal enforcement Officers, and Admin personnel, in order to effectively see that the law, and visa intent is followed.

More big government.

Employers of undocumented persons must become unwelcome as a Company.

Start with the largest companies, including the Trump organization, and work your way down.  While you're at it, collect Taxes from them to pay for all this.

deter temptation of anyone to present themselves here, expecting a job.

If they have jobs, then they don't need "Welfare," and they can pay taxes.  Who's going to work the road crews?  You?  

Can local or even Federal Government help undocumented people to get legal?

Yes, that's literally what INS was for, before it was changed to ICE.

Lax enforcement of law is not a good thing.

Funny, I didn't hear you saying that when "Justice" Cavanaugh was refusing to answer questions in an official Senate hearing.  It must depend on the laws being broken.

Lots of things need 'repair', and we need our politicians, who earn money to do such activity,

I agree.  Give everyone in Congress a shovel, and send them out to work with the road crews, until they find the money to invest in our Infrastructure.  I bet they'll find it quick, by bipartisan action, after 8 hours of that work in August.  They can start with the Beltway.

This "Tough on crime" platform would be a lot more convincing if you gave as much attention to mass murder, and government corruption as you did trespassing, and a shoplifter.

You didn't even mention illegal Russian immigrants.  That's what I asked, I know, because you quoted me.

[joan1984]

  Anyone who is illegally here should be removed.

THAT is the answer to your 'illegal' ruskies concern. Round them up, ship them home... if not home, then OUT of here, by whatever means is necessary.

[psiberzerker]

 Anyone who is illegally here should be removed.

WHAT WOULD JESUS CAPSLOCK!?

You know the illegal "Russkies" don't come in through Mexico, and South America, right?

What about the open border?