Month: April 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has promised “a big decision” on the Paris climate agreement in the next two weeks.

He spoke on his 100th day in office, at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in an arena that holds up to 10,000 people.

Early in the president’s speech, a protester was tackled and removed from the audience. 

“Get him out of here,” the president said, while the audience cheered.

Trump also touted “great relationships” with nations such as China and the United Kingdom. Listing his achievements, he mentioned the confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. Trump mistakenly referred to Gorsuch as “Chief Justice.” The U.S. chief justice is John Roberts.

Earlier in the day, Trump signed an executive order at a shovel factory in central Pennsylvania, directing his administration to review the nation’s trade agreements. The order aims to determine whether the U.S. is being treated equitably by its trading partners in the 164-nation World Trade Organization.

White House correspondents

Also Saturday, the White House Correspondents’ Association in Washington held its annual charity dinner, a black-tie occasion that has earned the nickname “Nerd Prom.” The nickname plays on Washington’s reputation for politics and policy than for glitz and glamour.

For the first time since the 1980s, the U.S. president is not attending the dinner, an affair that usually features jokes at the president’s expense. Trump boycotted this year’s dinner, citing his contempt for the media.

“I hope they have a good dinner,” he tweeted. “Ours is going to be much more exciting.”

Later, at the rally, he said, “I could not possibly be more thrilled to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp.”

In his weekly radio address, Trump said the first 100 days of his administration have been “just about the most successful in our country’s history.”

Trump said his administration is bringing back auto manufacturing jobs to the rust belt states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania and has created “tens of thousands of jobs” with his approval of two oil pipeline projects.

The president also said his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is protecting American jobs, and that his administration’s elimination of some federal regulations aims to “unleash job creation.”

In Pennsylvania, state Democratic Party Chairman Marcel Groen encouraged Trump opponents to join a counterprotest he said would be attended by national and local leaders and activists, including Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Michael Blake.

“We’ll rally to show Donald Trump that we will not stand idly by as he continues his attacks on the values we believe in,” Groen said in a statement.

Counter-rally

Since Trump has been president, Groen said, his accomplishments are “nonexistent” and Americans are “worse off.”

“During his first 100 days, Trump has spent more days on the golf course than he has spent protecting American workers,” Groen added.

Pennsylvania was a key state victory for Trump in the November election, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the state since 1988.

His visit to Pennsylvania came on the same day tens of thousands of activists marched in more than 300 cities, including Washington, in an effort to draw support for climate-related causes.

Protesters, who have condemned what they see as the administration’s lack of concern for environmental issues, marched from the U.S. Capitol to the White House, where they held a rally.
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Twenty-five years ago, a jury acquitted four white police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, sparking looting and violence that would turn into one of the deadliest race riots in American history.

On Saturday, hundreds of people marked the anniversary with marches advocating peace and hope.

A “Future Fest” began at Florence and Normandie avenues — the South Los Angeles intersection where rioting erupted — and was followed by a community festival.

Organizer Eric Ares, 34, is a lifelong resident of the area. He remembers the electricity going out in his house at the start of the rioting, leaving his family essentially cut off from the outside world without lights or a TV.

“For the next couple of nights, there was this fear going on,” he said. “We were huddled up in the living room.”

When he did venture outside, Ares saw plumes of smoke coming from places where buildings had been torched. But a small restaurant on the corner, a liquor store and other local businesses were untouched, he said.

People had a “real feeling of anger and frustration,” but it was mainly directed at police, politicians and businesses they believed oppressed, neglected or exploited them, Ares said.

Graffiti on walls warned: “No justice, no peace,” he said.

“I remember being at the park on the third day, people screaming: ‘We’re not gonna let them do it to us anymore,’ ” Ares said.

But while the march and festival marks the events of a quarter-century ago, the commemoration also looked to a future where community organizations are working to deal with problems still confronting South L.A., Ares said.

“There’s still extreme poverty. There’s still issues of law enforcement … education and health care and access to good jobs,” he said. “But the difference is, we have a plan.”

About five miles north of the intersection, a peace parade was held in the Koreatown neighborhood, where tensions between black residents and Korean-American immigrant storekeepers led to markets, shops and gas stations being looted or burned. Some merchants stood guard with guns to protect their stores.

In the wake of the riots, community groups reached out and tried to mend fences.

On Saturday, several hundred people marched in an enthusiastic show of unity that included Korean drummers in traditional costume, a South Los Angeles drumline, taekwando students and schoolchildren from Watts.

K. Choi, 73, of Arcadia, was among the marchers. He helped organize the original peace march days after the rioting and said he believed racial relations had vastly improved.

“At that time it was different,” he said. “The politics and the social problems, whatever, all commingled together and then things exploded.”

“But now is a very different situation,” he said. “All those relationships are getting better between (the) Korean and black community, including (the) Spanish community … we’re getting along very good, and I hope we’re getting a better future.”
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“Are y’all ready for an old-fashioned Troll Storm?”

Andrew Anglin, white supremacist and follower of what has been branded the alt-right in American political thought, wrote those words on his blog The Daily Stormer on December 16, 2016.

With that, the hate messages and death threats to Tanya Gersh and the people around her starting coming in — by email, by phone, on Twitter. Life for the Jewish real estate agent from Whitefish, Montana, her family, even her friends and co-workers, suddenly turned upside down.

Hate messages

“Merry Christmas, you Christ-killer.”

“You are a disgusting, vile Jew. You filthy & depraved Jews never learn; it is your people’s behavior responsible for our resentment of you, which pales in comparison to your hatred for us.”

“We are going to ruin you. … You will be driven to the brink of suicide. We will be there to take pleasure in your pain and eventual end.”

“If I was you I would suck the barrel of a shotgun.”

“The holocaust is coming.”

And, to her 12-year-old son’s Twitter account:

“WTF is wrong with you freaks?!”

He was also tagged in a tweet saying, “psst, kid, theres a free Xbox One inside this oven.”

There were calls to her workplace. There were calls to her husband’s workplace. There were calls to their home. The most chilling calls contained only the sound of gunshots.

Lawsuit

The whole thing caught Gersh by surprise. Soon after Anglin published Gersh’s contact information, she came home and found her husband “in a completely dark house” with suitcases packed, she told a reporter for The Guardian, a British newspaper. When asked why, he showed her Anglin’s post.

Since then, the Gershes have received more than 700 hate messages. Last week, Gersh and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sued Anglin.

“We knew Andrew Anglin had an online army primed to attack with the click of a mouse,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a statement. “We intend to hold him accountable for the suffering he has caused Ms. Gersh and to send a strong message to those who use their online platforms as weapons of intimidation.”

This lawsuit is different from any other that the SPLC has pursued before, Cohen said, because it specifically addresses online harassment. For the Gershes, the fact that many of the threats are online makes them no less real.

The lawsuit — a civil one, meaning the defendants face fines rather than criminal charges if convicted — cites invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of Montana’s Anti-Intimidation Act. They are asking for damages greater than $75,000 on at least three of the counts.

Neo-Nazi ties

The conflict behind the messages started with an investment property owned by Sherry Spencer, the mother of Richard Spencer, a white nationalist said by himself and others to have coined the term “alt-right.”

Richard Spencer’s mission is to capture the imagination of the online generation. He runs an Alexandria, Virginia, organization called the National Policy Institute.

Richard Spencer was caught on video in November at a Trump rally in Washington, D.C., giving the Nazi salute and saying, “Hail, Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Since then, he has called for war on Jews, blacks and anyone else who doesn’t fit his profile.

Residents of Whitefish, uneasy with Spencer’s notoriety, discussed protesting in front of Sherry Spencer’s Whitefish property — a mixed-use building housing small businesses and vacation rentals, nestled between a yarn shop and a youth hostel on a residential street.

Stories about the investment property differ: Tanya Gersh said she accepted a request from Sherry Spencer to help her sell it. Spencer, in a December 15, 2016, post on the website Medium, said Gersh tried to intimidate her into selling. Spencer accused Gersh of extortion.

Gersh’s lawyers say they think Richard Spencer may have ghostwritten his mother’s post, but no there is no verification. Anglin published his declaration of war the next day.

Since his initial post, Anglin has written about the Gershes at least 30 times, in a blog with hundreds of thousands of visitors each month.

He put photos of Gersh, her son and the leader of a local activist group on a flyer advertising a white-pride march he planned to hold in Whitefish in January. Anglin boasted that attendees would come from all over the world. He said there would be people carrying baseball bats, swords and machine guns. He said they would march right up to the Gershes’ door.

Eventually, he was forced to admit he had been denied a permit for the march. It was because of “some alleged technicality,” he wrote.

Consequences

While Anglin’s rhetoric may sound like the rantings of a melodramatic teenager, its effect has been deadly serious.

Gersh has stopped working and taken down all social media accounts. She says she struggles with how to explain to her children why this is happening. Most nights, she says, she cries.

Experts debate whether the online culture has sparked more hate or only makes it easier to spread.

Jeffrey McCall, professor of media studies at DePauw University in Indiana, says the anonymity of online communications makes it easier to “engage in angry messaging from hidden locations with virtually no worry of repercussions.”

If the SPLC lawsuit is successful, that may change.

“I know I’m not the first person that Andrew Anglin has victimized,” Gersh told The Guardian last week. “I’m filing a lawsuit against him because he and his white nationalist followers terrorized me and my family for months, and my life is forever changed. My sense of safety is forever changed.”
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If last weekend’s protest march was about science, this weekend it’s about people.

On Saturday, the People’s Climate March takes place in Washington. Scientists, religious groups, advocates for low-income people of color, labor unions, anti-corporate activists and more plan to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and encircle the White House. They condemn President Donald Trump’s support for fossil fuels and his disdain for the dangers of climate change.

The demonstration comes a week after the March for Science drew crowds of researchers and science enthusiasts to Washington and more than 600 locations worldwide. Marchers denounced policymakers who ignore the scientific consensus on climate change and other issues.

The back-to-back marches are an example of how an issue that once concerned a small group of researchers is now on the agenda for groups ranging from low-income people of color to major corporations.

Resistance

While the science march was nominally nonpartisan, this Saturday’s is not.

The People’s Climate March is about “making sure Trump’s attacks on our families and our communities are resisted,” said the Sierra Club’s Maura Cowley.

Trump’s “America First” energy policy aims to tap abundant domestic coal, oil and natural gas resources by relaxing regulations that restrict their development.

“Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said Friday at a signing ceremony for his latest executive order promoting fossil fuel development.

Opponents say Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuel production threaten to raise greenhouse gas emissions at a time when the planet faces dangerous levels of warming.

Minorities hit first and worst

March organizers say the climate movement has expanded far beyond the usual environmental groups and their typically white members.

“There has been a challenge with diversity on the issue of environment and climate,” said Liz Havstad, executive director of the advocacy group the Hip Hop Caucus. “Part of it is a misconception that communities of color and low-income communities may not care as much about climate and environment because it may not feel as front-and-center as other issues. But that’s a mistake.”

She noted that low-income minority communities are hit first and worst by the consequences of climate change.

“When Hurricane Katrina hit and we saw all in front of us what the impacts of a storm like that could be, and what it means for poor folks, poor people of color in terms of how our government responded, we knew we had to take on climate change as a major issue,” Havstad said.

Plus, she noted, the oil refineries, coal-fired power plants and other facilities generating the pollution that causes climate change are often located where low-income people of color live.

Growing support

The list of nearly 1,000 groups joining Saturday’s march reads like a roll call of local, state and national progressive politics. But it’s not just advocates, noted Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell.

“There are a lot of businesses that are now part of this mix,” he said, “either because they’re companies that care about the fate of the planet and they’re buying a lot of renewable energy and becoming efficient, or they’re clean-energy companies, who are employing hundreds of thousands of people in the solar and wind industry.”

The public is increasingly behind the march’s aims. According to recent polls, two-thirds  to three-quarters of Americans are concerned about climate change, and two-thirds say humans are responsible.

Kimmell says the one key group missing from the coalition wanting action on climate is elected Republicans in Washington.

“I don’t want to say this is just a partisan issue,” he added. “When you get out of the Beltway, people are rolling up their sleeves and dealing with this issue.” He pointed to Republican state governors who have supported clean energy. “But within Washington, there’s no doubt there’s an unfortunate absence of leadership.”

The 2014 People’s Climate March drew hundreds of thousands to New York City. This year’s march is expected to include author and former Vice President Al Gore, movie star Leonardo DiCaprio and businessman Richard Branson.

The forecast calls for temperatures near 32 degrees Celsius, more typical for July than April in Washington.
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The National Security Agency has stopped one of its most controversial practices since the disclosure of its “warrantless wiretapping” scandal in 2013.

The agency announced Friday that it would no longer collect Americans’ emails and text messages that mention foreign nationals targeted for surveillance that are sent to people outside the U.S.

The agency said from now on it would collect only messages sent directly to or from a foreign target.

The NSA has argued that such practices are legal and necessary to track people who might have links to terrorism or are targeted for surveillance for other reasons. Intelligence officials say the fact that a U.S. citizen has contact with those individuals is ground for suspicion.

Privacy advocates have argued that the practice oversteps the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches because officials were intercepting messages based on their content, rather than their sender or recipient.

The NSA said an in-house review of the surveillance program showed several accidental incidents of noncompliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that authorizes the surveillance. It said it reported the incidents to Congress and to the federal court that monitors such surveillance.

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from the northwestern state of Oregon, told reporters Friday that he had been working on this issue “for years and years” and called the program “a magnet for abuse.” He said the NSA should be commended for its decision.
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A senior U.S. official is warning that the North Korean regime poses the greatest threat to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). The U.S. position on the treaty was released in advance of next week’s meeting in Vienna of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 NPT review conference.

Robert Wood, the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said his main goal at the two-week NPT PrepCom would be to get the international community to stand together in condemnation of North Korea’s provocations, threats and actions.

A change of behavior

He said the U.S. was not after regime change in North Korea; it is after a change of behavior by the government.

“When you have a situation like this where a country back in 2003 announced its withdrawal from the NPT, this is a huge concern for the international community that has not been addressed,” Wood said. “And, we in the NPT family need to address this issue. And when you see what they are doing, the threats and provocations they are making towards the United States, Republic of Korea, Japan — this kind of rhetoric cannot be tolerated.”

President Donald Trump has warned that the United States would have to greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until the world came to its senses regarding nuclear weapons.

US looks to make NPT stronger

Wood told VOA the United States was committed to strengthening the NPT. He said the president’s comments were made in reaction to the rapid modernization of nuclear weapons by China and Russia. He said Washington would not be in second or third place should this modernization continue.

“However, that does not mean in any way that the United States would shirk on its responsibilities that it has under the NPT, particularly Article Six, which deals with good faith, willingness to engage in good-faith negotiations on nuclear disarmament.” Wood said.  

Both the United States and Russia possessed tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War in 1967. These arsenals have been considerably reduced. Russia now has the most with 7,300 nuclear weapons, followed by the U.S. with nearly 7,000.

Observers agree this lesser quantity of nuclear arms is still capable of destroying the Earth several times over.
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President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday that could lead to the future expansion of drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

The order will direct his interior secretary to review a plan that dictates which locations are open to offshore drilling.

It’s Trump’s latest effort to dismantle his predecessor’s environmental legacy and part of his promise to unleash the nation’s untapped energy reserves in an effort to reduce reliance on foreign oil and spur jobs.

The move is already drawing fierce opposition from environmental activists, who warn offshore drilling harms whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbates global warming.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the order “will cement our nation’s position as a global energy leader” and puts the U.S. “on track for American energy independence.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday a major conflict with North Korea is possible in the standoff over its nuclear and missile programs, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute.

“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview ahead of his 100th day in office Saturday.

Nonetheless, Trump said he wanted to peacefully resolve a crisis that has bedeviled multiple U.S. presidents, a path that he and his administration are emphasizing by preparing a variety of new economic sanctions while not taking the military option off the table.

“We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult,” he said.

Praise for Xi

Trump lavished praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping for Chinese assistance in trying to rein in North Korea. The two leaders met in Florida earlier this month.

“I believe he is trying very hard. He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.

“With that being said, he loves China and he loves the people of China. I know he would like to be able to do something, perhaps it’s possible that he can’t,” Trump said.

Tillerson heads to UN

Trump spoke just a day after he and his top national security advisers briefed U.S. lawmakers on the North Korean threat and one day before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will press the United Nations Security Council on sanctions to further isolate Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs.

The Trump administration on Wednesday declared North Korea “an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority.” It said it was focusing on economic and diplomatic pressure, including Chinese cooperation in containing its defiant neighbor and ally, and remained open to negotiations.

U.S. officials said military strikes remained an option but played down the prospect, though the administration has sent an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine to the region in a show of force.

Risk of retaliation

Any direct U.S. military action would run the risk of massive North Korean retaliation and huge casualties in Japan and South Korea and among U.S. forces in both countries.

Trump, asked if he considered North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be rational, said he was operating from the assumption that he is rational. He noted that Kim had taken over his country at an early age.

“He’s 27 years old. His father dies, took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy, especially at that age.

“I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit, I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational,” he said.

Trump, sipping a Coke delivered by an aide after the president ordered it by pressing a button on his desk, appeared to rebuff an overture from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who told Reuters a direct phone call with Trump could take place again after their first conversation in early December angered Beijing.

China considers neighboring Taiwan to be a renegade province.

“My problem is that I have established a very good personal relationship with President Xi,” said Trump. “I really feel that he is doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation. So I wouldn’t want to be causing difficulty right now for him.”

“So I would certainly want to speak to him first.”
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President Donald Trump on Thursday created an office at the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve accountability and protect whistleblowers, calling it a “bold step forward.”

Trump, who made improving veterans’ care a prominent issue in his presidential campaign, said the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection will make clear “that we will never, ever tolerate substandard care for our great veterans.” VA Secretary David Shulkin said the office will help identify “barriers” that make it difficult for the department to fire or reassign bad managers or employees.

Another function of the office will be to help shield whistleblowers from retaliation.

“With the creation of this office, we are sending a strong message: Those who fail our veterans will be held, for the first time, accountable,” Trump said at the VA before signing an executive order to create the office. “And at the same time, we will reward and retain the many VA employees who do a fantastic job, of which we have many.”

The move follows Trump’s signing last week of a bill that extends a VA program that allowed some veterans to seek medical care outside of the department’s troubled health system.

In 2014, as many as 40 veterans died as they spent months waiting for appointments at the VA medical center in Phoenix. Officials there were found to have manipulated appointment data and engaged in other schemes in attempt to cover up the backlog.

Trump also joined veterans’ groups in calling on the Senate to pass a pending accountability measure.

The House has already passed a bill to make it make it easier for the VA to fire, suspend or demote employees for poor performance or bad conduct, but the Senate continues to work on its version of the legislation. Shulkin said Trump’s decision to create the office even before Congress sends him a bill speaks to his commitment to accountability at the VA.

“He’s asking through his executive order for VA to do everything that it can internally,” Shulkin said Wednesday at a White House briefing. “But we know that that’s not going to be enough to get done what I want to get done, which is to be able to, once we identify people that need to leave the organization, to get them out quickly. So I do need legislative help as well.”

Improve care, reduce fraud and abuse

The VA said it will have an executive director for the accountability office by mid-June. The director will help identify ways the VA secretary can discipline or terminate a VA manager or employee as well as reward top performers. The VA has often complained it can’t discipline or remove employees due to a lengthy union grievance process.

Shulkin also announced additional steps Thursday to improve VA care and to reduce waste, fraud and abuse at the department through a task force made up of private-sector and government groups.

The VA also plans to partner with the Department of Health and Human Services to allow medical professionals from the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps to help provide care to veterans at VA facilities in underserved areas. Shulkin has said that his reform effort includes building a more “integrated” model of VA care that uses private doctors and doctors from other federal agencies.

The VA will also exempt state-owned veteran nursing homes from federal requirements to remove red tape and offer veterans more services, Shulkin said.

Meanwhile, veterans’ groups want the Senate to act soon to send the accountability legislation to Trump for his signature.

“The longer the Senate waits, the longer veterans will suffer,” said Mark Lucas, executive director of Concerned Veterans for America.

No new hiring

The new VA office will also investigate reports of retaliation against VA employees who expose illegal or unethical conduct, Shulkin said, adding that “we will take actions” if it is determined that an employee whistleblower has been subjected to retaliation for coming forward.

No new hiring will be done for the office. Existing VA employees will be transferred there, despite department-wide employee shortages and a decision to leave thousands of VA positions unfilled. Shulkin said he didn’t have dollar figures for how much the office would cost, but said it will require a “substantial commitment.”

The executive order is one of several Trump is signing this week as he seeks to score accomplishments before Saturday, his symbolic 100th day in office.
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