America’s Little Big Man
Trump is teaching us how deeply disturbed our American world actually is.
BY TOM ENGELHARDT
He’s huge. Outsized. He fills the news hole at any moment of any day. His over-tanned face glows unceasingly in living rooms across America. Never has a president been quite so big. So absolutely monstrous. Or quite so small.
He’s our Little Big Man.
I know, I know… he induces panic, fear, anxiety, insomnia. Shrinks in liberal America will tell you that, since November 2016, their patients are more heavily medicated and in worse shape. He’s a nightmare, a unique monster. It’s been almost two years since he first entered the presidential race and in all that time I doubt there’s been a moment when the cameras haven’t been trained on him, when he wasn’t “breaking news.” (By May 2016, he had already reportedly received the equivalent in “earned media” of nearly $3 billion in free advertising.) He and his endless controversial statements, flubs, tweets, lies, insults, boasts, tales from outer space and over-the-moon adjectives are covered daily the way, once upon a time, only Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination was.
Think of him as the end of the world as we, or maybe anyone, including Vladimir Putin, knew it. To me, that means one thing, even though most of you won’t agree: I think we owe Donald Trump a small bow of thanks and a genuine debt of gratitude. He’s teaching us something invaluable, something we probably wouldn’t have grasped without him. He’s teaching us just how deeply disturbed our American world actually is, or he wouldn’t be where he is.
A Quagmire Country
Think of him as a messenger from the gods, the deities of empire gone astray. They sent us a man without a center, undoubtedly because 17 years into the 21st century our country lacks a center, and a man without a fixed opinion or a single conviction, except about himself and his family, because this country is now a swirling mess of contradictory beliefs and groups at each other’s throats. They sent us our first billionaire president who left countless people holding the bag in his various, often failed, business dealings. He brings to mind that classic phrase “those that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind” just as we’re now reaping the results of the 1 percent politics that gained such traction in recent years; and of a kind of war-making, American style, that initially seemed aimed at global supremacy, but now seems to have no conceivable goal. We’re evidently destined to go on killing ever more people, producing ever more refugees, cracking open ever more nations, and spreading ever more terror movements until the end of time. They sent a man ready to build a vanity wall on the Mexican border and pour more money into the US military at a time when it’s becoming harder for Americans to imagine investing in anything but an ever-more powerful national security state, even as the country’s infrastructure begins to crumble. They sent a billionaire who once deep-sixed a startling number of his businesses to save a country that couldn’t be more powerful and yet has proven incapable of building a single mile of high-speed rail.
Into this quagmire, the gods dispatched the man who loves MOAB, who drools over “my generals,” who wants to build a “big, fat, beautiful wall” on our southern border, but was beyond clueless about where power actually lay in Washington.
He’s a man with a history but without a sense of history, a man for whom anything is imaginable and everything is mutable, including the past. In this, too, he’s symptomatic of the nation he now “leads.” Who among us even remembers the set of Washington officials who, only a decade and a half ago, had such glorious dreams about establishing a global Pax Americana and who led us so unerringly into an unending hell in the Greater Middle East? Who remembers that those officials of the George W. Bush administration had another dream as well — of a Pax Republicana, a one-party imperial state that would stretch across the American South deep into the Midwest, Southwest and parts of the West, kneecapping the Democratic Party for an eternity and leaving that artifact of a two-party past confined to the country’s coastal areas. Their dream — and it couldn’t have been more immodest — was to rule the world and its great remaining superpower for… well… more or less ever.
They were to dominate America and America was to dominate everything else in a way no country in history — not the Romans, not the British — had ever done. As they saw it, in the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union, there would be no other superpower, nor even a bloc of great powers, capable of obstructing America’s destined future. They and their successors would see to that.
The United States would be the land of wealth and power in a previously unimaginable fashion. It would be the land that made everything that went bang in the night — and in that (and perhaps that alone) their dreams would be fulfilled. To this day, Hollywood and its action films dominate planetary screens, while American arms merchants have a near monopoly on selling the world their dangerous toys. As our new president recently put it, their energies and those of the US government should remain focused on getting countries across the globe to engage in “the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment.” Indeed.
As for the rest of their dream of geopolitical dominance, it began to come a cropper remarkably quickly. As it turned out, the military that American presidents regularly hailedin these years as the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” or “the finest fighting force in the history of the world” couldn’t even win wars against lightly armed insurgents or deal with enemies employing roadside bombs that could be built off the internet for the price of a pizza. The US military (and its allied warrior corporations) turned out not to be a force for eternal order and triumph but, at least across the Greater Middle East and Africa, for eternal chaos and the spread of terror movements. They were the whirlwind, which meant that neither that “pax” nor that “Americana” would come to pass.
While Rome Burned…
Meanwhile, back at home, a gerrymandered, near-one-party state did indeed come into existence as the Republicans swept most governorships, gained control of a significant majority of state legislatures, nailed down the House and the Senate and finally, when Little Big Man entered the Oval Office, took it all. It was a feat for the history books — or so it briefly seemed. Instead, the result has been chaos, thanks in part to a Republican Party that is actually three or four parties and a president barely associated with it, as a war of all against all broke out. None of this should have been surprising, given a congressional party that had honed its skills not on ruling but on blocking rule. In the last months, it has largely proved incapable even of ruling itself, no less the wild man and his unpredictable team of advisers in the White House.
From his “big, fat, beautiful wall” to his “big league,” “phenomenal” tax plan to his “insurance for everybody” health care program, the president promises to be the living proof that the long dreamed of Pax Republicana is just another form of war without end on the domestic front.
His victory was, in a sense, a revelation that both political parties had been hollowed out, as every Republican presidential candidate except him was swept unceremoniously off stage and out of contention in a hail of insults. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, by now a remarkably mindless (and spineless) political machine without much to underpin it, came to seem ever more like the domestic equivalent of those failed states the war on terror was creating in the Greater Middle East. In short, American politics was visibly faltering and, in the whirlwind that deposited Little Big Man in office, a far wider range of Americans seemed in danger of going down, too, including Medicaid users, Obamacare enrollees, meals-on-wheels seniors and food stamp recipients in what could become a slow-motion collapse of livable lives amid a proliferation of billionaires. Think of us as a nation in the process of consuming itself, even as our president turns the White House into a private business. If this is imperial “decline,” it’s certainly a curious version of it.
It was into the growing hell that passed for the planet’s “sole superpower” that those gods dispatched Little Big Man — not a shape-shifting creature but a man without shape and lacking all fixed ideas (except about himself). He was perfectly capable of saying anything in any situation, and then, in altered circumstances, of saying the opposite without blinking or evidently even noticing. His recent trip to Saudi Arabia was a classic case of just that. Gone were the election campaign denunciations of the Saudis for their human rights record and for possibly being behind the 9/11 attacks, as well as of Islam as a religion that “hates us”; gone was his criticism of Michelle Obama for not wearing a headscarf on her visit to Riyadh (Melania and Ivanka did the same), and of Barack Obama for bowing to a Saudi king (he did, too). Out the window went his previous insistence that any self-respecting American politician must use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” which he carefully avoided. And none of this was different from, say, swearing on the campaign trail that he would never touch Medicaid and then, in his first budget, offering plans to slash $880 billion from that program over the next decade.
Admittedly, Donald Trump — and yes, that’s the first time I’ve used his name, but there was no need, was there? — has yet to appoint his horse (or perhaps his golf cart) as a senator or, as far as we know, commit acts of incest in the tradition of Caligula, the first mad Roman emperor. Yet in many ways, doesn’t he feel something like an updated version of that figure or perhaps of Nero who so famously fiddled — actually, according to historian Mary Beard in her book SPQR, played the lyre — while Rome burned?
Fortunately, unlike every psychiatrist in town, I’m not bound by the “Goldwater Rule,” which prohibits a diagnosis of a public figure you haven’t personally examined. While I have no expertise in whether Donald Trump has a “narcissistic personality disorder,” I see no reason not to say the obvious: He’s a distinctly disturbed individual. That he was nonetheless elected president tells us a good deal about where we are as a country today. As Tony Schwartz, who actually wrote his bestselling book The Art of the Deal, put it recently, “Trump was equally clear with me that he didn’t value — nor even necessarily recognize — the qualities that tend to emerge as people grow more secure, such as empathy, generosity, reflectiveness, the capacity to delay gratification or above all, a conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong.”
Now, that should be frightening. After all, given who he is, given his fear of “losing,” of rejection, of not being loved (or more accurately, adulated), of in short being obliterated, who knows what such a man might do in a crisis, including obliterating the rest of us. After all, he already lives in a world without fixed boundaries, definitions or history, which is why nothing he says has real meaning. And yet he couldn’t be more meaningful. He’s a message, a warning of the first order, and if that were all he were, he would just be an inadvertent teacher about the nature of our American world and we could indeed thank him and do our best to move on.
Unfortunately, there’s another factor to take into account. Humanity had, in the years before his arrival, come up with two quite different and devastating ways of doing ourselves in, one an instant Armageddon, the other a slow-motion trip to hell. Each of them threatens to cripple or destroy the very planet that has nurtured us these tens of thousands of years. It was not, of course, Donald Trump who put us in this peril. He’s just a particularly grim reminder of how dangerous our world has truly become.
After all, Little Big Man now has unparalleled access to the most “beautiful” weapons of all and he’s eager to update and expand an already vast US arsenal of them. I’m talking, of course, about nuclear weapons. Any president we elect has, since the 1950s, had the power to take out the planet. Only once have we come truly close. Nonetheless, for the control over such weaponry to be in the hands of a deeply unpredictable and visibly disturbed president is obviously a danger to us all.
It could be assumed that the gods who sent him into the Oval Office at such a moment have a perverse sense of humor. Certainly, on the second of those deadly dangers, climate change, he’s already taken action based on another of his fantasies: that making America great again means taking it back to the fossil-fueled 1950s. His ignorance about, and actions to increase the effects of, climate change have already taken the US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, out of the climate change sweepstakes and into uncharted territory. These acts and the desire to promote fossil fuels in every way imaginable will someday undoubtedly be seen as crimes against humanity. But by then they will already have done their dirty deed.
If luck doesn’t hold, Donald Trump may end up making Caligula and Nero look like statesmen. If luck doesn’t hold he may be the Littlest Big Man of all.
May 31, 2017
Tipped Over
Cassini Finds Saturn Moon May Have Tipped Over
Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus may have tipped over in the distant past, according to recent research from NASA's Cassini mission. Researchers with the mission found evidence that the moon's spin axis -- the line through the north and south poles -- has reoriented, possibly due to a collision with a smaller body, such as an asteroid.
Examining the moon's features, the team showed that Enceladus appears to have tipped away from its original axis by about 55 degrees -- more than halfway toward rolling completely onto its side. "We found a chain of low areas, or basins, that trace a belt across the moon's surface that we believe are the fossil remnants of an earlier, previous equator and poles," said Radwan Tajeddine, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.
The area around the icy moon's current south pole is a geologically active region where long, linear fractures referred to as tiger stripes slice across the surface. Tajeddine and colleagues speculate that an asteroid may have struck the region in the past when it was closer to the equator. "The geological activity in this terrain is unlikely to have been initiated by internal processes," he said. "We think that, in order to drive such a large reorientation of the moon, it's possible that an impact was behind the formation of this anomalous terrain."
In 2005, Cassini discovered that jets of water vapor and icy particles spray from the tiger stripe fractures -- evidence that an underground ocean is venting directly into space from beneath the active south polar terrain.
Whether it was caused by an impact or some other process, Tajeddine and colleagues think the disruption and creation of the tiger-stripe terrain caused some of Enceladus' mass to be redistributed, making the moon's rotation unsteady and wobbly. The rotation would have eventually stabilized, likely taking more than a million years. By the time the rotation settled down, the north-south axis would have reoriented to pass through different points on the surface -- a mechanism researchers call "true polar wander."
The polar wander idea helps to explain why Enceladus' modern-day north and south poles appear quite different. The south is active and geologically young, while the north is covered in craters and appears much older. The moon's original poles would have looked more alike before the event that caused Enceladus to tip over and relocate the disrupted tiger-stripe terrain to the moon's south polar region.
The results were published in the online edition of the journal Icarus on April 30, 2017.
Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus may have tipped over in the distant past, according to recent research from NASA's Cassini mission. Researchers with the mission found evidence that the moon's spin axis -- the line through the north and south poles -- has reoriented, possibly due to a collision with a smaller body, such as an asteroid.Examining the moon's features, the team showed that Enceladus appears to have tipped away from its original axis by about 55 degrees -- more than halfway toward rolling completely onto its side. "We found a chain of low areas, or basins, that trace a belt across the moon's surface that we believe are the fossil remnants of an earlier, previous equator and poles," said Radwan Tajeddine, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.
The area around the icy moon's current south pole is a geologically active region where long, linear fractures referred to as tiger stripes slice across the surface. Tajeddine and colleagues speculate that an asteroid may have struck the region in the past when it was closer to the equator. "The geological activity in this terrain is unlikely to have been initiated by internal processes," he said. "We think that, in order to drive such a large reorientation of the moon, it's possible that an impact was behind the formation of this anomalous terrain."
In 2005, Cassini discovered that jets of water vapor and icy particles spray from the tiger stripe fractures -- evidence that an underground ocean is venting directly into space from beneath the active south polar terrain.
Whether it was caused by an impact or some other process, Tajeddine and colleagues think the disruption and creation of the tiger-stripe terrain caused some of Enceladus' mass to be redistributed, making the moon's rotation unsteady and wobbly. The rotation would have eventually stabilized, likely taking more than a million years. By the time the rotation settled down, the north-south axis would have reoriented to pass through different points on the surface -- a mechanism researchers call "true polar wander."The polar wander idea helps to explain why Enceladus' modern-day north and south poles appear quite different. The south is active and geologically young, while the north is covered in craters and appears much older. The moon's original poles would have looked more alike before the event that caused Enceladus to tip over and relocate the disrupted tiger-stripe terrain to the moon's south polar region.
The results were published in the online edition of the journal Icarus on April 30, 2017.
The world at stake.
The Question Sean Spicer Hasn't Asked the President
It's only the world at stake.
By REBECCA LEBER
You'd think President Donald Trump's opinion of climate change might inform the decision he promised to make on the Paris climate accord this week, following meetings with G7 leaders who pressured him to keep the US engaged. But it seems his team doesn't know what his position actually is.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, here is Press Secretary Sean Spicer's response to a reporter's question about whether Trump believes human activity is contributing to global warming: "Honestly, I haven't asked him. I can get back to you."
The reporter then asked if he feels as if Trump is still trying to make up his mind. "I don't know," Spicer responded.
Though Spicer didn't hint at what his boss will ultimately decide, he mentioned that Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt met on Tuesday. That might be a bad sign, as Pruitt has been leading the Trump administration's "leave" contingent.
It's not just Spicer who's sent mixed signals about whether Trump still thinks global warming is a "total, and very expensive, hoax," as he's tweeted.
During a press briefing in late March, when Trump was rolling out his anti-climate executive orders, a reporter asked a senior White House official whether the president accepted that humans contribute to climate change. "Sure. Yes, I think the president understands the disagreement over the policy response," he replied. But pressed further, he couldn't fully explain Trump's position, his advisers, or his own, for that matter. "I guess the key question is to what extent, over what period of time," he said. "Those are the big questions that I think still we need to answer."
His advisers have recently suggested that Trump's views on the Paris deal and climate change were, in the words of economic adviser Gary Cohn, "evolving," though they've offered little evidence of what those views now are. "I think he is learning to understand the European position," Cohn said during the G7 meetings last week. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who acknowledges climate change as a threat, claimed Trump was "curious about why others were in the position they were" on the Paris deal, and that he was "wide open" on the issue.
Regardless what Trump thinks of the Paris agreement, he's been clear that his policy choices won't reflect the best available science. Our timeline of Trump's comments on global warming should give you a better idea of the ebbs and flows of his position since 2009.
It's only the world at stake.
By REBECCA LEBER
You'd think President Donald Trump's opinion of climate change might inform the decision he promised to make on the Paris climate accord this week, following meetings with G7 leaders who pressured him to keep the US engaged. But it seems his team doesn't know what his position actually is.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, here is Press Secretary Sean Spicer's response to a reporter's question about whether Trump believes human activity is contributing to global warming: "Honestly, I haven't asked him. I can get back to you."
The reporter then asked if he feels as if Trump is still trying to make up his mind. "I don't know," Spicer responded.
Though Spicer didn't hint at what his boss will ultimately decide, he mentioned that Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt met on Tuesday. That might be a bad sign, as Pruitt has been leading the Trump administration's "leave" contingent.
It's not just Spicer who's sent mixed signals about whether Trump still thinks global warming is a "total, and very expensive, hoax," as he's tweeted.
During a press briefing in late March, when Trump was rolling out his anti-climate executive orders, a reporter asked a senior White House official whether the president accepted that humans contribute to climate change. "Sure. Yes, I think the president understands the disagreement over the policy response," he replied. But pressed further, he couldn't fully explain Trump's position, his advisers, or his own, for that matter. "I guess the key question is to what extent, over what period of time," he said. "Those are the big questions that I think still we need to answer."
His advisers have recently suggested that Trump's views on the Paris deal and climate change were, in the words of economic adviser Gary Cohn, "evolving," though they've offered little evidence of what those views now are. "I think he is learning to understand the European position," Cohn said during the G7 meetings last week. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who acknowledges climate change as a threat, claimed Trump was "curious about why others were in the position they were" on the Paris deal, and that he was "wide open" on the issue.
Regardless what Trump thinks of the Paris agreement, he's been clear that his policy choices won't reflect the best available science. Our timeline of Trump's comments on global warming should give you a better idea of the ebbs and flows of his position since 2009.
Not Safe
A Federal Judge Slams Trump: "Even the 'Good Hombres' Are Not Safe"
A fiery opinion denounces a deportation for "ripping apart a family."
By PEMA LEVY
Today, a federal appeals court judge in California rebuked the Trump administration for its zealous deportation policy and for "ripping apart a family." Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had no power to stop the removal of Andres Magana Ortiz, but nevertheless took the time to write a short opinion blasting his deportation as "inhumane."
"We are unable to prevent Magana Ortiz's removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system," Reinhardt wrote in a six-page concurring opinion. "Indeed, the government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice…I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not."
As Reinhardt detailed in his opinion, Magana Ortiz came to the United States from Mexico 28 years ago, built a family and a career, and paid his taxes. His wife and three children are American citizens. His only legal transgressions were two DUIs, the last one 14 years ago. "[E]ven the government conceded during the immigration proceedings that there was no question as to Magana Ortiz's good moral character," Reinhardt noted. Nonetheless, in March the government decided to deny Magana Ortiz's application for a stay of removal while he applied for legal residency status, a process that is still underway, and moved to deport him to Mexico.
Reinhardt took particular aim at the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in the first months of Donald Trump's presidency, that the administration's immigration crackdown is not only targeting violent criminals. "President Trump has claimed that his immigration policies would target the 'bad hombres,'" he wrote. "The government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz shows that even the 'good hombres' are not safe. Magana Ortiz is by all accounts a pillar of his community and a devoted father and husband. It is difficult to see how the government's decision to expel him is consistent with the President's promise of an immigration system with 'a lot of heart.' I find no such compassion in the government's choice to deport Magana Ortiz."
A fiery opinion denounces a deportation for "ripping apart a family."
By PEMA LEVY
Today, a federal appeals court judge in California rebuked the Trump administration for its zealous deportation policy and for "ripping apart a family." Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had no power to stop the removal of Andres Magana Ortiz, but nevertheless took the time to write a short opinion blasting his deportation as "inhumane."
"We are unable to prevent Magana Ortiz's removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system," Reinhardt wrote in a six-page concurring opinion. "Indeed, the government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice…I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not."
As Reinhardt detailed in his opinion, Magana Ortiz came to the United States from Mexico 28 years ago, built a family and a career, and paid his taxes. His wife and three children are American citizens. His only legal transgressions were two DUIs, the last one 14 years ago. "[E]ven the government conceded during the immigration proceedings that there was no question as to Magana Ortiz's good moral character," Reinhardt noted. Nonetheless, in March the government decided to deny Magana Ortiz's application for a stay of removal while he applied for legal residency status, a process that is still underway, and moved to deport him to Mexico.
Reinhardt took particular aim at the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in the first months of Donald Trump's presidency, that the administration's immigration crackdown is not only targeting violent criminals. "President Trump has claimed that his immigration policies would target the 'bad hombres,'" he wrote. "The government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz shows that even the 'good hombres' are not safe. Magana Ortiz is by all accounts a pillar of his community and a devoted father and husband. It is difficult to see how the government's decision to expel him is consistent with the President's promise of an immigration system with 'a lot of heart.' I find no such compassion in the government's choice to deport Magana Ortiz."
China activists
Arrested, missing China activists spark criticism of Trump
By Erika Kinetz
The arrest and disappearance of three labor activists investigating a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-branded shoes in China prompted a call for her brand to cease working with the supplier and raised questions about whether the first family's commercial interests would muddy U.S. leadership on human rights.
The men were working with a U.S. nonprofit to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and possible misuse of student labor, according to China Labor Watch executive director Li Qiang, who lost contact with the investigators over the weekend. China Labor Watch has been exposing poor working conditions at suppliers to some of the world's best-known companies for nearly two decades, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China's state security apparatus.
The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China's ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has taken a stern approach to activism in southern China's manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.
China Labor Watch's investigation also had an unusual target: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.
"Ivanka's brand should immediately cease its work with this supplier, and the Trump administration should reverse its current course and confront China on its human rights abuses," Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a Wednesday email. Ivanka Trump must decide, she added, "whether she can ignore the Chinese government's apparent attempt to silence an investigation into those worker abuses."
Conditions at a Chinese factory where designer clothes are manufactured, including for Ivanka Trump's fashion line, were not entirely up-to-snuff for the 80 workers there:
They logged nearly 60 hours a week and many made just over $60 in that period, according to an outside audit last fall. That same facility was producing its clothes for New York-based G-III Apparel Group Ltd., which has the exclusive license to manufacture blouses, dresses and other items under Trump's fashion line.
Ivanka Trump's lifestyle brand imports most of its merchandise from China, trade data show. She and her father both have extensive trademark portfolios in China, though neither has managed to build up a large retail or real estate presence here. The sister of Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and husband of Ivanka, travelled to China this past month to court investment from Chinese families for a real estate project in New Jersey.
"The eagerness of members of the family to do business in China while airbrushing very troubling human rights and labor rights records of the country is troubling," said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. We'll have to wait and see, he added, "to what extent business is trumping any kind of consideration of the diplomatic capital of the U.S. in promoting human rights, labor rights and democracy." Amnesty International called for the release of Hua Haifeng on Wednesday, as well as his two colleagues, who are feared to have been detained.
White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump's brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment.
Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter became a White House presidential adviser, has said the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to "comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions."
China tightened control over foreign NGOs starting this year by requiring them to register with state security. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Wednesday that she was not aware of the arrest and disappearances. She said China welcomed international NGOs to carry out research, but added, "we also hope that NGOs can also observe Chinese laws and regulations and don't engage in any illegal actions or behavior."
Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn't need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family's breadwinner.
Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the Deng and the two other investigators, Li Zhao and Su Heng, on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi province, but was told he had to do so in the man's hometown.
AP was unable to reach the other investigators' families. China's Ministry of Public Security and police could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China. Calls went unanswered Wednesday morning.
The men were investigating Huajian Group factories in the southern Chinese cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan. Su Heng had been working undercover at the Ganzhou factory since April, Li said.
In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump's brand — a fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand merchandise, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit.
"We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately," a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email Tuesday. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.
Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border May 25 and later questioned by police, Li said.
During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.
Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns — some of whom allegedly quit in protest — were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said.
Hua's wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple's children, ages 3 and 7, about their father's plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.
"My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa," Deng said by phone from her home in central China's Hubei province. "I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys."
She said the child looked at her and answered: "Papa was taken away by a monster."
By Erika Kinetz
The arrest and disappearance of three labor activists investigating a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-branded shoes in China prompted a call for her brand to cease working with the supplier and raised questions about whether the first family's commercial interests would muddy U.S. leadership on human rights.
The men were working with a U.S. nonprofit to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and possible misuse of student labor, according to China Labor Watch executive director Li Qiang, who lost contact with the investigators over the weekend. China Labor Watch has been exposing poor working conditions at suppliers to some of the world's best-known companies for nearly two decades, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China's state security apparatus.
The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China's ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has taken a stern approach to activism in southern China's manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.
China Labor Watch's investigation also had an unusual target: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.
"Ivanka's brand should immediately cease its work with this supplier, and the Trump administration should reverse its current course and confront China on its human rights abuses," Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a Wednesday email. Ivanka Trump must decide, she added, "whether she can ignore the Chinese government's apparent attempt to silence an investigation into those worker abuses."
Conditions at a Chinese factory where designer clothes are manufactured, including for Ivanka Trump's fashion line, were not entirely up-to-snuff for the 80 workers there:
They logged nearly 60 hours a week and many made just over $60 in that period, according to an outside audit last fall. That same facility was producing its clothes for New York-based G-III Apparel Group Ltd., which has the exclusive license to manufacture blouses, dresses and other items under Trump's fashion line.
Ivanka Trump's lifestyle brand imports most of its merchandise from China, trade data show. She and her father both have extensive trademark portfolios in China, though neither has managed to build up a large retail or real estate presence here. The sister of Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and husband of Ivanka, travelled to China this past month to court investment from Chinese families for a real estate project in New Jersey.
"The eagerness of members of the family to do business in China while airbrushing very troubling human rights and labor rights records of the country is troubling," said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. We'll have to wait and see, he added, "to what extent business is trumping any kind of consideration of the diplomatic capital of the U.S. in promoting human rights, labor rights and democracy." Amnesty International called for the release of Hua Haifeng on Wednesday, as well as his two colleagues, who are feared to have been detained.
White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump's brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment.
Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter became a White House presidential adviser, has said the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to "comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions."
China tightened control over foreign NGOs starting this year by requiring them to register with state security. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Wednesday that she was not aware of the arrest and disappearances. She said China welcomed international NGOs to carry out research, but added, "we also hope that NGOs can also observe Chinese laws and regulations and don't engage in any illegal actions or behavior."
Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn't need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family's breadwinner.
Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the Deng and the two other investigators, Li Zhao and Su Heng, on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi province, but was told he had to do so in the man's hometown.
AP was unable to reach the other investigators' families. China's Ministry of Public Security and police could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China. Calls went unanswered Wednesday morning.
The men were investigating Huajian Group factories in the southern Chinese cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan. Su Heng had been working undercover at the Ganzhou factory since April, Li said.
In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump's brand — a fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand merchandise, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit.
"We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately," a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email Tuesday. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.
Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border May 25 and later questioned by police, Li said.
During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.
Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns — some of whom allegedly quit in protest — were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said.
Hua's wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple's children, ages 3 and 7, about their father's plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.
"My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa," Deng said by phone from her home in central China's Hubei province. "I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys."
She said the child looked at her and answered: "Papa was taken away by a monster."
British election
An English Hillary Clinton? Left-wing Trump?
How the British election looks like America's.
By SUSAN B. GLASSER
Is Prime Minister Theresa May a British Hillary Clinton? Is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a sort of left-wing Donald Trump?
Britain votes next week in a general election that was supposed to be effectively a coronation for May, the unlikely prime minister who came to power last summer as a result of Britain’s surprise decision last June to vote to leave the European Union. But instead of “the Brexit Election,” as May called it, strengthening her hand as she heads into tough negotiations with the European Union over the terms of their divorce, May now finds herself in a real contest on June 8 with a Labour leader previously seen as utterly unelectable.
For an American columnist fresh off the 2016 election, there are some striking similarities to ponder. Both leading candidates seem to have taken their cues from the U.S. in ways that could prove risky. Like Clinton when faced with Trump, May has chosen to turn the contest into a referendum on her opponent, the hard-left Corbyn, whose views are far outside the British mainstream and whose party members in parliament voted 80 percent in favor of dumping him as their leader. As a top May adviser put it to me, “Any day we’re talking about May versus Corbyn, we’re winning. Anything else, and we are not.”
But many days lately they have not been talking about Corbyn—or even much about the future of Britain at all.
“It was going to be ‘the Brexit Election’ but it seems that other concerns were dominating,” says Steve Hilton, who served as the Conservatives’ top strategist in the last British general election before falling out with his close friend, May’s predecessor David Cameron, over Brexit. In a new interview for The Global Politico, Hilton says May has not followed through on the “political revolution” that brought Brexit and Trump to the U.S. with a comparable “policy revolution”—nor does she seem likely to after a campaign that at times now seems reminiscent of last year’s American contest.
Indeed, May’s own leadership style and decision-making became the issue in ways she could hardly have anticipated when she called the “snap” election in April. In loud echoes of the rap on Clinton, May has been dinged in recent days on everything from her insular way of running 10 Downing St. and small circle of confidants to talking points-laden speeches and lack of a positive vision for the country.
May promised British voters “strong and stable” leadership—in theory an appealing slogan at a time of massive uncertainty about the country’s post-Europe future—but then was forced to abandon a key plank in her party platform just four days after issuing the campaign manifesto. She proposed and quickly withdrew a so-called “dementia tax” to make Britons pay more out of pocket for long-term care, resulting in days of punishing press coverage; the Tories’ lead in the polls quickly collapsed from some 22 points to as little as 5 points. Headlines, like this one in the left-leaning Independent, started warning: “Theresa May will meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton.”
And meantime, the much-maligned Corbyn has been running what many British pols this week told me they consider a near-flawless campaign. His advisers speak openly of how they Trumpified their leftist boss, courting controversy rather than avoiding it, doubling down on the party’s left wing rather than worrying about pivoting to the center, rallying the public with populist pledges to skip the messy foreign entanglements in favor of investing more back home.
Then came Manchester.
Massacre of the Innocents. Fortress Britain. Pure Evil.
All week long the tabloids screamed out the horror of the terrorist attack in this football-obsessed, proudly working-class hub of the industrial revolution turned booming center of the new economy, with 22 dead in the Monday night bombing of an Ariana Grande concert full of young girls and their mothers. By the time I arrived Tuesday afternoon, all national campaigning had been suspended as Britain stopped to mourn the dead. At the vigil that night in Manchester’s Albert Square, I stood amid a silent, tearful crowd of thousands. There was shock but not necessarily surprise that Manchester had been added to the long list of European cities like Paris, Brussels and Berlin that have been hit by such attacks in the last few years.
On his first international trip as president, Trump took time out to condemn the Manchester attack, calling the bomber who did it an “evil loser.” Even many Brits who said they didn’t like Trump thought that was just about the right tone to strike.
By Wednesday, May had ordered armed police to the streets and the British military to take up positions at key posts and raised the nation’s threat level to the highest in a decade, assessing the chances of another attack as “imminent.” The papers were no longer talking about her “U-turn” on the “dementia tax” but about whether the national police budget had been cut too much in recent years and how security should play in May’s favor over Corbyn, nobody’s idea of a get-tough-on-terrorists hawk.
By Friday, campaigning was back on, and the subject was most decidedly not May’s social program. As Corbyn complained that British foreign policy was partly to blame for the terrorist attack, May went on the offensive.
Mixing partisan politics with a G-7 summit in Sicily, she said Corbyn’s statement amounted to an “excuse for terrorism,” adding: “The choice that people face at the general election has just become starker. It’s a choice between me, working constantly to protect the national interest and to protect our security—and Jeremy Corbyn, who frankly isn’t up to the job.”
After a painful detour of more than a week, May was back doing what her campaign believed she had to do to win: Make it a him-or-me kind of a race.
But those nagging, haven’t-we-seen-this-play-before doubts continue to follow May, and how could they not, with memories so fresh of Clinton’s decision to make the election a referendum on Trump? May is very much a creature of the British Tory establishment whose careful political persona would seem to be not only Clintonian, but out of step with the to-hell-with-that ethos that led to the Brexit vote less than a year ago.
Then again, her advisers reckon that might not matter so much, and there are several broad developments that might help May even if her own political skills undercut her. Most important: she’s pulled perhaps the most important flip-flop possible in going from Brexit opponent before last year’s referendum to portraying herself as the strong-willed negotiator who can deliver on Brexit in this year’s race, pitching even more explicitly to the white working-class voters who fueled the referendum win at just the moment when the insurgent party that helped fuel the referendum, the UK Independence Party and its immigrant-bashing leader Nigel Farage, has seemingly imploded.
And besides, it’s still hard to see a realistic scenario for a Prime Minister Corbyn.
Can a Labour leader who repeatedly voted against counterterrorism funding, who has been attacked for calling the killing of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy,” and whose party manifesto is the most left-wing document the party has produced since 1983, really have a chance? What are the odds?
“Zero percent,” a veteran BBC producer told me me—except, he quickly added that, in this age of Brexit and Trump, he no longer trusts the polls, or his own political instincts honed over three decades of covering British elections, or anything really.
How the British election looks like America's.
By SUSAN B. GLASSER
Is Prime Minister Theresa May a British Hillary Clinton? Is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a sort of left-wing Donald Trump?
Britain votes next week in a general election that was supposed to be effectively a coronation for May, the unlikely prime minister who came to power last summer as a result of Britain’s surprise decision last June to vote to leave the European Union. But instead of “the Brexit Election,” as May called it, strengthening her hand as she heads into tough negotiations with the European Union over the terms of their divorce, May now finds herself in a real contest on June 8 with a Labour leader previously seen as utterly unelectable.
For an American columnist fresh off the 2016 election, there are some striking similarities to ponder. Both leading candidates seem to have taken their cues from the U.S. in ways that could prove risky. Like Clinton when faced with Trump, May has chosen to turn the contest into a referendum on her opponent, the hard-left Corbyn, whose views are far outside the British mainstream and whose party members in parliament voted 80 percent in favor of dumping him as their leader. As a top May adviser put it to me, “Any day we’re talking about May versus Corbyn, we’re winning. Anything else, and we are not.”
But many days lately they have not been talking about Corbyn—or even much about the future of Britain at all.
“It was going to be ‘the Brexit Election’ but it seems that other concerns were dominating,” says Steve Hilton, who served as the Conservatives’ top strategist in the last British general election before falling out with his close friend, May’s predecessor David Cameron, over Brexit. In a new interview for The Global Politico, Hilton says May has not followed through on the “political revolution” that brought Brexit and Trump to the U.S. with a comparable “policy revolution”—nor does she seem likely to after a campaign that at times now seems reminiscent of last year’s American contest.
Indeed, May’s own leadership style and decision-making became the issue in ways she could hardly have anticipated when she called the “snap” election in April. In loud echoes of the rap on Clinton, May has been dinged in recent days on everything from her insular way of running 10 Downing St. and small circle of confidants to talking points-laden speeches and lack of a positive vision for the country.
May promised British voters “strong and stable” leadership—in theory an appealing slogan at a time of massive uncertainty about the country’s post-Europe future—but then was forced to abandon a key plank in her party platform just four days after issuing the campaign manifesto. She proposed and quickly withdrew a so-called “dementia tax” to make Britons pay more out of pocket for long-term care, resulting in days of punishing press coverage; the Tories’ lead in the polls quickly collapsed from some 22 points to as little as 5 points. Headlines, like this one in the left-leaning Independent, started warning: “Theresa May will meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton.”
And meantime, the much-maligned Corbyn has been running what many British pols this week told me they consider a near-flawless campaign. His advisers speak openly of how they Trumpified their leftist boss, courting controversy rather than avoiding it, doubling down on the party’s left wing rather than worrying about pivoting to the center, rallying the public with populist pledges to skip the messy foreign entanglements in favor of investing more back home.
Then came Manchester.
Massacre of the Innocents. Fortress Britain. Pure Evil.
All week long the tabloids screamed out the horror of the terrorist attack in this football-obsessed, proudly working-class hub of the industrial revolution turned booming center of the new economy, with 22 dead in the Monday night bombing of an Ariana Grande concert full of young girls and their mothers. By the time I arrived Tuesday afternoon, all national campaigning had been suspended as Britain stopped to mourn the dead. At the vigil that night in Manchester’s Albert Square, I stood amid a silent, tearful crowd of thousands. There was shock but not necessarily surprise that Manchester had been added to the long list of European cities like Paris, Brussels and Berlin that have been hit by such attacks in the last few years.
On his first international trip as president, Trump took time out to condemn the Manchester attack, calling the bomber who did it an “evil loser.” Even many Brits who said they didn’t like Trump thought that was just about the right tone to strike.
By Wednesday, May had ordered armed police to the streets and the British military to take up positions at key posts and raised the nation’s threat level to the highest in a decade, assessing the chances of another attack as “imminent.” The papers were no longer talking about her “U-turn” on the “dementia tax” but about whether the national police budget had been cut too much in recent years and how security should play in May’s favor over Corbyn, nobody’s idea of a get-tough-on-terrorists hawk.
By Friday, campaigning was back on, and the subject was most decidedly not May’s social program. As Corbyn complained that British foreign policy was partly to blame for the terrorist attack, May went on the offensive.
Mixing partisan politics with a G-7 summit in Sicily, she said Corbyn’s statement amounted to an “excuse for terrorism,” adding: “The choice that people face at the general election has just become starker. It’s a choice between me, working constantly to protect the national interest and to protect our security—and Jeremy Corbyn, who frankly isn’t up to the job.”
After a painful detour of more than a week, May was back doing what her campaign believed she had to do to win: Make it a him-or-me kind of a race.
But those nagging, haven’t-we-seen-this-play-before doubts continue to follow May, and how could they not, with memories so fresh of Clinton’s decision to make the election a referendum on Trump? May is very much a creature of the British Tory establishment whose careful political persona would seem to be not only Clintonian, but out of step with the to-hell-with-that ethos that led to the Brexit vote less than a year ago.
Then again, her advisers reckon that might not matter so much, and there are several broad developments that might help May even if her own political skills undercut her. Most important: she’s pulled perhaps the most important flip-flop possible in going from Brexit opponent before last year’s referendum to portraying herself as the strong-willed negotiator who can deliver on Brexit in this year’s race, pitching even more explicitly to the white working-class voters who fueled the referendum win at just the moment when the insurgent party that helped fuel the referendum, the UK Independence Party and its immigrant-bashing leader Nigel Farage, has seemingly imploded.
And besides, it’s still hard to see a realistic scenario for a Prime Minister Corbyn.
Can a Labour leader who repeatedly voted against counterterrorism funding, who has been attacked for calling the killing of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy,” and whose party manifesto is the most left-wing document the party has produced since 1983, really have a chance? What are the odds?
“Zero percent,” a veteran BBC producer told me me—except, he quickly added that, in this age of Brexit and Trump, he no longer trusts the polls, or his own political instincts honed over three decades of covering British elections, or anything really.
Denounces
Lance, during town hall, denounces Trump budget proposal
By KATIE JENNINGS
U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance told hundreds of constituents Tuesday evening that he does not back President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, but the five-term Republican congressman remained guarded in his criticism of the growing scandals involving the administration’s communication with Russian officials.
“Regarding the budget document, I do not support it,” Lance told a packed auditorium of around 400 people during a town hall at Union County College in Cranford. “The president proposes and Congress disposes.”
Trump’s recently released budget proposal contains significant cuts to social safety net programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and Social Security disability benefits.
The proposal, Lance said, was “merely a blueprint as to how to move forward.” But, he said, cuts it calls for “are too significant.”
Lance also voiced confidence in his fellow Republican state delegation colleague, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, though Frelinghuysen’s name was greeted with a loud chorus of boos from the audience. The congressman from North Jersey has come under intense criticism for refusing to hold a town hall and for supporting the House Republican Obamacare repeal plan.
For his part, Lance broke with the GOP line earlier this month when he voted against the Obamacare repeal plan, but many of the audience members on Tuesday were pushing for him to further distance himself from Trump.
Lance represents the 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris, Somerset, Union and Warren counties and all of Hunterdon County. Historically, it has been a solid Republican district. However, it swung for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and was recently changed from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” by The Cook Political Report in the wake of the Obamacare repeal vote.
During the 90-minute town hall, Alan from Somerville, who identified himself as a registered Republican, told Lance he had lost faith in GOP, given the “clear criminality of the current administration and the lack of outcry or action from the party in control.”
Alan asked Lance when he would call on the administration to release the president’s tax returns, financial disclosure forms regarding Trump family investments and more information about Russia's involvement in the November election.
“When will you call them out? What will it take to make a clear statement?” Alan asked.
The mild-mannered Lance carefully selected his responses, gliding over some of the more charged components.
The congressman said he supported the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller by the Justice Department as special counsel to investigate the issue.
“I think that is an excellent step and I believe that Mr. Mueller will investigate the matters that you have raised and he will do so in a completely impartial and above board manner,” Lance said.
He also said he believed Trump’s tax returns “are likely to be subpoenaed by the special counsel.”
Lance kicked the issue of whether the Trump family’s financial interests violated the U.S. Constitution to the Supreme Court.
The Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution bars federal officials from accepting payments from foreign governments. Lance gave a theoretical example of whether a foreign government paying to rent the ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., would constitute a violation.
“That is an open question, ladies and gentlemen. I believe that should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States," he said.
Pressed further by cries from the audience to denounce the president, Lance responded, “I criticize the president where I disagree with him. I indicate where I support him.”
“A fair and impartial investigation regarding the whole Russian situation should occur,” he said. “I think that Bob Mueller will do a superb job and let the chips fall where they may.”
By KATIE JENNINGS
U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance told hundreds of constituents Tuesday evening that he does not back President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, but the five-term Republican congressman remained guarded in his criticism of the growing scandals involving the administration’s communication with Russian officials.
“Regarding the budget document, I do not support it,” Lance told a packed auditorium of around 400 people during a town hall at Union County College in Cranford. “The president proposes and Congress disposes.”
Trump’s recently released budget proposal contains significant cuts to social safety net programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and Social Security disability benefits.
The proposal, Lance said, was “merely a blueprint as to how to move forward.” But, he said, cuts it calls for “are too significant.”
Lance also voiced confidence in his fellow Republican state delegation colleague, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, though Frelinghuysen’s name was greeted with a loud chorus of boos from the audience. The congressman from North Jersey has come under intense criticism for refusing to hold a town hall and for supporting the House Republican Obamacare repeal plan.
For his part, Lance broke with the GOP line earlier this month when he voted against the Obamacare repeal plan, but many of the audience members on Tuesday were pushing for him to further distance himself from Trump.
Lance represents the 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris, Somerset, Union and Warren counties and all of Hunterdon County. Historically, it has been a solid Republican district. However, it swung for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and was recently changed from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” by The Cook Political Report in the wake of the Obamacare repeal vote.
During the 90-minute town hall, Alan from Somerville, who identified himself as a registered Republican, told Lance he had lost faith in GOP, given the “clear criminality of the current administration and the lack of outcry or action from the party in control.”
Alan asked Lance when he would call on the administration to release the president’s tax returns, financial disclosure forms regarding Trump family investments and more information about Russia's involvement in the November election.
“When will you call them out? What will it take to make a clear statement?” Alan asked.
The mild-mannered Lance carefully selected his responses, gliding over some of the more charged components.
The congressman said he supported the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller by the Justice Department as special counsel to investigate the issue.
“I think that is an excellent step and I believe that Mr. Mueller will investigate the matters that you have raised and he will do so in a completely impartial and above board manner,” Lance said.
He also said he believed Trump’s tax returns “are likely to be subpoenaed by the special counsel.”
Lance kicked the issue of whether the Trump family’s financial interests violated the U.S. Constitution to the Supreme Court.
The Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution bars federal officials from accepting payments from foreign governments. Lance gave a theoretical example of whether a foreign government paying to rent the ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., would constitute a violation.
“That is an open question, ladies and gentlemen. I believe that should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States," he said.
Pressed further by cries from the audience to denounce the president, Lance responded, “I criticize the president where I disagree with him. I indicate where I support him.”
“A fair and impartial investigation regarding the whole Russian situation should occur,” he said. “I think that Bob Mueller will do a superb job and let the chips fall where they may.”
Scares off potential appointees
Russia probe scares off potential appointees
The growing scandal is giving some candidates cold feet — and distracting aides from finding new recruits.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and JOSH DAWSEY
President Donald Trump’s effort to fill hundreds of vacant jobs across the federal government has hit a new snag: Russia.
Potential hires are paying close attention to the expanding investigations, which have now begun to touch senior Trump aides, with some questioning whether they want to join the administration.
Four people who work closely with prospective nominees told POLITICO that some potential hires are having second thoughts about trying to land executive branch appointments as federal and congressional investigations threaten to pose a serious distraction to Trump’s agenda.
“It’s an additional factor that makes what was an already complicated process of staffing the government even harder,” said Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, which has advised the Trump transition on hiring.
According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, the White House has announced nominees for just 117 of the 559 most important Senate-confirmed positions.
That trails the records of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who had each nominated about twice as many people by this point in the first year of their first terms.
Trump has not yet nominated a No. 2 at the Agriculture Department, Education Department, Department of Veterans Affairs or Environmental Protection Agency, and dozens of top positions at every federal agency remain vacant. Trump’s nominees for deputy secretary of Commerce and Treasury both withdrew.
One lawyer who represents prospective political appointees told POLITICO that three clients said over the past two weeks that they are no longer interested in working for the Trump administration following the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that people are being very cautious, to put it mildly,” this lawyer said, adding that there is growing concern in Republican circles that the caliber of hires could deteriorate if the administration’s top picks drop out.
“You’re going to have a situation where they’re going to have trouble getting A-list or even B-list people to sign up,” the lawyer added.
Others agreed. “With all that is going on now, there is certainly a greater amount of hesitation,” said a former government official who regularly speaks with one of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries. “They have a real talent problem that continues to grow.”
A White House spokeswoman said the Russia investigation and the series of news stories that have pummeled the administration in recent weeks have had no impact on hiring. She said the president is recruiting individuals “of the highest quality.”
But the steady stream of palace intrigue stories about internal tensions and plans for a staff shakeup — after months of rumors about various senior officials getting pushed out — are making it harder to persuade people to join the administration, another White House official said.
White House communications director Michael Dubke said Tuesday he will leave his role, while Trump is weighing the possibility of bringing former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie into the White House.
“It’s not the best place to work right now, but you’re still working at the White House, so there are far worse jobs,” the official said.
Former Bush and Obama administration officials who worked on personnel issues told POLITICO they never struggled to find qualified candidates for top jobs.
“I can’t speak to Republicans not wanting to join this administration but, as a general matter, we didn’t have trouble recruiting people — quite the opposite,” said Lisa Brown, who served as White House staff secretary under Obama for two years.
Along with distracting from lower-level hires, the Russia probe has slowed and complicated the process of filling the administration’s highest-profile vacancy — director of the FBI.
Trump administration officials have been frustrated by the difficulties they’ve faced in finding a new FBI director. Top White House officials, including chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon, hoped to have made a decision made by now.
Instead, leading candidates Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and former Sen. Joe Lieberman have all withdrawn from consideration. The White House is now looking at a new field of candidates, and Trump met with two possibilities — John Pistole and Chris Wray — on Tuesday.
“It’s not so easy to find an FBI director in the Trump administration,” the White House official said.
The official added that Trump and his senior team are aware that hiring is not moving fast enough at agencies but said that, right now, “It’s just not priority No. 1.”
A second White House official said he was not aware of any potential nominees dropping out because of the recent news but echoed concerns that the Russia probe would inevitably add to further delays filling empty jobs.
“The problem we are likely to have is it may be difficult to get people to focus on hiring with all of this going on,” the official said.
The growing scandal is giving some candidates cold feet — and distracting aides from finding new recruits.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and JOSH DAWSEY
President Donald Trump’s effort to fill hundreds of vacant jobs across the federal government has hit a new snag: Russia.
Potential hires are paying close attention to the expanding investigations, which have now begun to touch senior Trump aides, with some questioning whether they want to join the administration.
Four people who work closely with prospective nominees told POLITICO that some potential hires are having second thoughts about trying to land executive branch appointments as federal and congressional investigations threaten to pose a serious distraction to Trump’s agenda.
“It’s an additional factor that makes what was an already complicated process of staffing the government even harder,” said Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, which has advised the Trump transition on hiring.
According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, the White House has announced nominees for just 117 of the 559 most important Senate-confirmed positions.
That trails the records of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who had each nominated about twice as many people by this point in the first year of their first terms.
Trump has not yet nominated a No. 2 at the Agriculture Department, Education Department, Department of Veterans Affairs or Environmental Protection Agency, and dozens of top positions at every federal agency remain vacant. Trump’s nominees for deputy secretary of Commerce and Treasury both withdrew.
One lawyer who represents prospective political appointees told POLITICO that three clients said over the past two weeks that they are no longer interested in working for the Trump administration following the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into Trump associates’ contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that people are being very cautious, to put it mildly,” this lawyer said, adding that there is growing concern in Republican circles that the caliber of hires could deteriorate if the administration’s top picks drop out.
“You’re going to have a situation where they’re going to have trouble getting A-list or even B-list people to sign up,” the lawyer added.
Others agreed. “With all that is going on now, there is certainly a greater amount of hesitation,” said a former government official who regularly speaks with one of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries. “They have a real talent problem that continues to grow.”
A White House spokeswoman said the Russia investigation and the series of news stories that have pummeled the administration in recent weeks have had no impact on hiring. She said the president is recruiting individuals “of the highest quality.”
But the steady stream of palace intrigue stories about internal tensions and plans for a staff shakeup — after months of rumors about various senior officials getting pushed out — are making it harder to persuade people to join the administration, another White House official said.
White House communications director Michael Dubke said Tuesday he will leave his role, while Trump is weighing the possibility of bringing former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie into the White House.
“It’s not the best place to work right now, but you’re still working at the White House, so there are far worse jobs,” the official said.
Former Bush and Obama administration officials who worked on personnel issues told POLITICO they never struggled to find qualified candidates for top jobs.
“I can’t speak to Republicans not wanting to join this administration but, as a general matter, we didn’t have trouble recruiting people — quite the opposite,” said Lisa Brown, who served as White House staff secretary under Obama for two years.
Along with distracting from lower-level hires, the Russia probe has slowed and complicated the process of filling the administration’s highest-profile vacancy — director of the FBI.
Trump administration officials have been frustrated by the difficulties they’ve faced in finding a new FBI director. Top White House officials, including chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon, hoped to have made a decision made by now.
Instead, leading candidates Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and former Sen. Joe Lieberman have all withdrawn from consideration. The White House is now looking at a new field of candidates, and Trump met with two possibilities — John Pistole and Chris Wray — on Tuesday.
“It’s not so easy to find an FBI director in the Trump administration,” the White House official said.
The official added that Trump and his senior team are aware that hiring is not moving fast enough at agencies but said that, right now, “It’s just not priority No. 1.”
A second White House official said he was not aware of any potential nominees dropping out because of the recent news but echoed concerns that the Russia probe would inevitably add to further delays filling empty jobs.
“The problem we are likely to have is it may be difficult to get people to focus on hiring with all of this going on,” the official said.
Impeachment...
Poll: Support for Trump impeachment rises
By STEVEN SHEPARD
An increasing percentage of voters want Congress to impeach President Donald Trump — even if they don't think Trump has committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the Constitution requires.
Forty-three percent of voters want Congress to begin impeachment proceedings, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, up from 38 percent last week.
"If President Trump was hoping his foreign trip would shift the conversation away from scandals, he may be out of luck," said Morning Consult Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "Over the last week, support for beginning impeachment proceedings among voters rose from 38 percent to 43 percent."
But that's still less than the 45 percent who don't want Congress to impeach Trump, down a tick from 46 percent the week before.
Only three American presidents in history have faced legitimate impeachment threats.
Much of the support for impeaching Trump comes from political considerations, the poll shows — not a belief that Trump is actually guilty of impeachable offenses, like treason, bribery or obstructing justice.
Of those who want Congress to move toward impeachment, a 54-percent majority of those believe Trump “has proven he is unfit to serve and should be removed from office, regardless of whether he committed an impeachable offense or not.” Only 43 percent of those seeking impeachment believe Trump has committed an offense that meets the high constitutional standards for removal.
The results underscore the intense partisan divisions following last year’s rancorous election. A wide majority of self-identified Democratic voters, 71 percent, want Congress to impeach Trump. But more than three-quarters of GOP voters, 76 percent, don’t think Congress should begin impeachment proceedings.
Despite the sharp split on impeachment, Trump’s approval ratings as president have stabilized, the poll shows. For the second consecutive week, 45 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while half disapprove. That has recovered from a low of 41 percent prior to Trump’s trip overseas this month.
While poll respondents were not asked explicitly to react to Trump’s first foreign trip, the poll shows voters are skeptical of Trump’s aspirations to help Israel and the Palestinians strike a long-sought peace deal. Only 9 percent think it’s very likely Trump will be able to broker such an agreement. More say it’s either somewhat likely (18 percent), not too likely (28 percent) or not likely at all (31 percent).
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll was conducted May 25-30, beginning just after the Congressional Budget Office weighed in on Trump’s chief legislative goal in the opening months of his presidency: the health care bill the House passed earlier this month. The CBO’s report projected the bill, if enacted, would save the federal government $119 billion over the next decade, but 23 million fewer Americans would have health insurance.
The poll shows more voters continue to disapprove of the GOP health care bill, 47 percent, than approve, 38 percent. And the 33 percent who disapprove of the bill “strongly” far outpaces the 14 percent who approve strongly.
A 47-percent plurality of voters think the bill would make the U.S. health care system worse — more than the 32 percent who think it would make the system better. Twenty-two percent say it won’t make a difference on the health care system.
Forty-seven percent of voters also believe the bill will increase their health care costs, while only 18 percent think it will lower their costs and 17 percent don’t think it will have an impact.
Last week’s CBO report is unlikely to improve voter perceptions of the bill. Told about both the bill’s deficit savings and the reductions in health insurance coverage, only 20 percent say it would make them more likely to support the bill. Nearly twice as many, 39 percent, say it makes them more likely to oppose the measure.
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll included interviews with 1,991 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
By STEVEN SHEPARD
An increasing percentage of voters want Congress to impeach President Donald Trump — even if they don't think Trump has committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the Constitution requires.
Forty-three percent of voters want Congress to begin impeachment proceedings, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, up from 38 percent last week.
"If President Trump was hoping his foreign trip would shift the conversation away from scandals, he may be out of luck," said Morning Consult Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "Over the last week, support for beginning impeachment proceedings among voters rose from 38 percent to 43 percent."
But that's still less than the 45 percent who don't want Congress to impeach Trump, down a tick from 46 percent the week before.
Only three American presidents in history have faced legitimate impeachment threats.
Much of the support for impeaching Trump comes from political considerations, the poll shows — not a belief that Trump is actually guilty of impeachable offenses, like treason, bribery or obstructing justice.
Of those who want Congress to move toward impeachment, a 54-percent majority of those believe Trump “has proven he is unfit to serve and should be removed from office, regardless of whether he committed an impeachable offense or not.” Only 43 percent of those seeking impeachment believe Trump has committed an offense that meets the high constitutional standards for removal.
The results underscore the intense partisan divisions following last year’s rancorous election. A wide majority of self-identified Democratic voters, 71 percent, want Congress to impeach Trump. But more than three-quarters of GOP voters, 76 percent, don’t think Congress should begin impeachment proceedings.
Despite the sharp split on impeachment, Trump’s approval ratings as president have stabilized, the poll shows. For the second consecutive week, 45 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, while half disapprove. That has recovered from a low of 41 percent prior to Trump’s trip overseas this month.
While poll respondents were not asked explicitly to react to Trump’s first foreign trip, the poll shows voters are skeptical of Trump’s aspirations to help Israel and the Palestinians strike a long-sought peace deal. Only 9 percent think it’s very likely Trump will be able to broker such an agreement. More say it’s either somewhat likely (18 percent), not too likely (28 percent) or not likely at all (31 percent).
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll was conducted May 25-30, beginning just after the Congressional Budget Office weighed in on Trump’s chief legislative goal in the opening months of his presidency: the health care bill the House passed earlier this month. The CBO’s report projected the bill, if enacted, would save the federal government $119 billion over the next decade, but 23 million fewer Americans would have health insurance.
The poll shows more voters continue to disapprove of the GOP health care bill, 47 percent, than approve, 38 percent. And the 33 percent who disapprove of the bill “strongly” far outpaces the 14 percent who approve strongly.
A 47-percent plurality of voters think the bill would make the U.S. health care system worse — more than the 32 percent who think it would make the system better. Twenty-two percent say it won’t make a difference on the health care system.
Forty-seven percent of voters also believe the bill will increase their health care costs, while only 18 percent think it will lower their costs and 17 percent don’t think it will have an impact.
Last week’s CBO report is unlikely to improve voter perceptions of the bill. Told about both the bill’s deficit savings and the reductions in health insurance coverage, only 20 percent say it would make them more likely to support the bill. Nearly twice as many, 39 percent, say it makes them more likely to oppose the measure.
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll included interviews with 1,991 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Preexisting relationship
Lewandowski: Trump needs staff who have a 'preexisting relationship' with him
By LOUIS NELSON
With a shakeup of the White House communications staff already underway, the president’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, offered his own prescription to fix President Donald Trump’s messaging team: more people like Corey Lewandowski.
The former Trump campaign manager, who resigned last summer amid allegations that he had assaulted a reporter, said the president would be better served by longtime allies with whom he has a “preexisting relationship.”
“When you have a communications team, they have to have that relationship with the president to understand how he communicates. Because he is the greatest communicator, as a president, we’ve ever had. He's better than the staff. He knows the media better,” Lewandowski said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning.
Lewandowski called Mike Dubke, Trump’s former communications director whose May 18 resignation was made public on Tuesday, “a very capable guy” who was nonetheless unable to adequately fulfill his duties because he arrived in the job without an understanding of how the president operates.
“When you have a president who is so active, who is so articulate, who is so good at communicating with the media, sometimes you’ve got staff who have to keep up with him, and it's much easier I think if you ask people who had a preexisting relationship to understand how the president functions,” Trump’s former campaign manager said. “That makes it much more cohesive. So just getting up to speed in a very difficult environment when you have so much negative media attention is a hard thing to do, I think, for anybody.”
Dubke’s resignation comes amid reports of a looming larger shakeup of the White House’s communications staff, one believed to include a reduction in visibility for press secretary Sean Spicer, who is no longer expected to hold daily, on-camera press briefings.
Lewandowski stopped short Wednesday morning of suggesting that he is in line for a job inside the White House, but said he would be interested in serving the president’s agenda either inside or outside the administration. POLITICO reported last week that Lewandowski and former Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie were in talks with the president to join the White House as crisis managers.
Lewandowski, who recently left the lobbying firm he started shortly after Trump’s election, was spotted at a Peet’s Coffee on Monday across the street from the White House.
“If I can be helpful, you know, I've been very clear, I want to make sure that this president's agenda gets done, which is tax reform and health care reform and building the wall on our southern border and all the things that he pledged during the campaign that he gets to execute,” Lewandowski said. “It's very important to know that I can be helpful on the outside, if they want me to be helpful on the inside and the right role is there, you know, I would be willing to consider that.”
By LOUIS NELSON
With a shakeup of the White House communications staff already underway, the president’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, offered his own prescription to fix President Donald Trump’s messaging team: more people like Corey Lewandowski.
The former Trump campaign manager, who resigned last summer amid allegations that he had assaulted a reporter, said the president would be better served by longtime allies with whom he has a “preexisting relationship.”
“When you have a communications team, they have to have that relationship with the president to understand how he communicates. Because he is the greatest communicator, as a president, we’ve ever had. He's better than the staff. He knows the media better,” Lewandowski said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning.
Lewandowski called Mike Dubke, Trump’s former communications director whose May 18 resignation was made public on Tuesday, “a very capable guy” who was nonetheless unable to adequately fulfill his duties because he arrived in the job without an understanding of how the president operates.
“When you have a president who is so active, who is so articulate, who is so good at communicating with the media, sometimes you’ve got staff who have to keep up with him, and it's much easier I think if you ask people who had a preexisting relationship to understand how the president functions,” Trump’s former campaign manager said. “That makes it much more cohesive. So just getting up to speed in a very difficult environment when you have so much negative media attention is a hard thing to do, I think, for anybody.”
Dubke’s resignation comes amid reports of a looming larger shakeup of the White House’s communications staff, one believed to include a reduction in visibility for press secretary Sean Spicer, who is no longer expected to hold daily, on-camera press briefings.
Lewandowski stopped short Wednesday morning of suggesting that he is in line for a job inside the White House, but said he would be interested in serving the president’s agenda either inside or outside the administration. POLITICO reported last week that Lewandowski and former Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie were in talks with the president to join the White House as crisis managers.
Lewandowski, who recently left the lobbying firm he started shortly after Trump’s election, was spotted at a Peet’s Coffee on Monday across the street from the White House.
“If I can be helpful, you know, I've been very clear, I want to make sure that this president's agenda gets done, which is tax reform and health care reform and building the wall on our southern border and all the things that he pledged during the campaign that he gets to execute,” Lewandowski said. “It's very important to know that I can be helpful on the outside, if they want me to be helpful on the inside and the right role is there, you know, I would be willing to consider that.”
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