DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalIvanka Trump has an army of White House employees scrambling to address her every need
Full article posted with the permission of Newsweek -- DonBY NINA BURLEIGH ON 11/2/17 AT 9:14 AM
Ever wonder how many government employees, employee hours and bits of correspondence it takes to get an hour and a half of Ivanka Trump’s time at a public event?
A new cache of hundreds of emails obtained from the Department of Education (DOE) through the Freedom of Information Act shows that for one brief event at the Air & Space Museum in March, at least 21 employees and at least 150 emails were required to arrange President Donald Trump’s daughter’s presence. The emails were obtained by the nonprofit American Oversight and shared exclusively with Newsweek.
The staff hours, angst and emailing that goes into putting a political “principal” like White House Adviser Ivanka Trump on stage at any event in Washington is always an exercise in theatrical production and people-management skills, what with the squads of coat-brushing, purse-holding, door-opening flunkies fighting for facetime. But in this case, it required the mobilization of at least 21 government employees (some of the emails were fully redacted) to choreograph less than an hour in the schedule of a woman who was not yet an official employee (who happened to be the president’s daughter). And high-ranking DOE staff were happy to oblige.
The emails offer a window into the genesis of a typical federal agency publicity event, this one ostensibly arranged to inform the public about the administration’s interest in STEM for girls. It was attended by mostly African American, local schoolchildren and featured a screening of the hit movie Shadow Figures plus short remarks from Betsy DeVos, Ivanka Trump and a female NASA astronaut, Kathryn (Kay) Hire.
The event was the brainchild of the office of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who Ivanka had run into at a bill signing in the White House on February 28. On March 1, she emailed DeVos (using her private “Ivanka Kushner” email account) to inform her that she wanted their staffs “to continue [to] discuss...opportunities to collaborate on locational/workforce development and k-12 STEM education.”
The next day, DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable, was sending emails around the White House, looking for “Julie in Ivankas’s office.” By that time, Ivanka already had space in the White House, and a staff including Julie Radford, the daughter of a Louisiana Republican, who would eventually be given the title of Ivanka’s White House chief of staff.
DeVos had been searching for a way to connect “with Jared and Ivanka” since as early as February 6, the day on which she was barely confirmed to her post when Vice President Mike Pence, a fellow evangelical, cast the tie-breaking Senate vote, according to another email from an Education Department staffer.
Throughout March, Radford and other White House staffers exchanged numerous emails with staff in DeVos’s office, arranging, canceling and rearranging meeting times, and discussing the various intricacies of Ivanka’s appearance. DeVos’s chief of staff emailed Radford, to “follow up on Ivanka’s conversation with Secretary DeVos outside the Oval”, during which Ivanka had mentioned she’d ”like to participate” in a DOE Women’s History Month event, scheduled for March 28. Radford responded: “Ivanka would love to come by the event and deliver a few brief remarks highlighting her support for STEM efforts and thanking Secretary DeVos for her leadership in this area.”
The emails highlight the careful attention paid to Ivanka’s branding on social media—and SnapChat’s involvement in that endeavor. On March 21, Radford emailed DeVos’s chief of staff that “SnapChat recently expressed interest in having Ivanka snapchat from events that engage with ‘young people’—would your team be open to something like that?”
Ivanka’s unofficial office left nothing to chance: Staff vetted invitations to the event, studied seating and stage charts, requested floor maps and inquired about DeVos’s “social media language” and whether the event would be “open or closed press,” which would determine Ivanka’s arrival and departure times, presumably to control contact.
Ivanka’s unofficial office eventually requested—and got—extra seats for students she wanted to invite, agreed that it was “100% fine to use her name” as long as DeVos’s name was also on the invitation, and set up a meet and greet with students, saying, “that’s always a favorite of Ivanka’s.” The press release ultimately listed the participants and included “Ivanka Trump – White House.”
A last-minute panic ensued during the final days before the event, as Ivanka’s staff was unable to give the DOE organizers a time for her arrival and departure, even as the participants were doing a walkthrough. “[S]o sorry to bug,” wrote DOE staffer Laura Riggs, one of several emails to the White House that tried to get a final time. “Any way we can nail down her arrival/departure today?” Radford replied that they had scheduled Ivanka for 45 minutes (the organizers wanted an hour and a half) but were "working to move things around" to arrive a little earlier to comply with DOE's plan.
On March 28, the spectacle and photo op went off without a hitch. The Washington Post made Ivanka the lead item in its coverage: “At an event at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum for local school kids “getting Excited About STEM” on Tuesday morning, Ivanka Trump needed no introduction. Or at least she didn’t get one. The powerful first daughter was announced to the crowd simply by her name, with no title – because she doesn’t really have one, although she has claimed an office in the West Wing.”
A day later, she had a title, assistant to the president. She was then required to file financial reports and comply with ethics and conflict of interest regulations. At that point, she also got a White House email address. Newsweek has been exclusively given access to emails she sent well into July, indicating that she continued to use private email for months after taking the official post.
Part Two of this report will follow.
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http://www.newsweek.com/ivanka-trump-devos-education-emails-698752
Russia probe could derail Trump nominee for top Agriculture post
Source: CNN
By Evan Perez, Jeff Zeleny, Manu Raju and Dan Merica, CNN
Updated 1347 GMT (2147 HKT) November 2, 2017
(CNN)President Donald Trump's nominee to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist is imperiled over his connections to the ongoing Russia probe, sources tell CNN.
A White House source said the nomination of Sam Clovis is in danger and could be pulled soon. A source familiar with the White House's thinking added that Clovis may have to withdraw, but it is not clear how that will happen, whether he will voluntarily pull out or be forced to do so.
The imperiled nomination is the latest sign that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign and Russian collusion is impacting the day-to-day of Trump's administration, despite top White House aides -- including Trump himself -- claiming that the indictments of former top Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates had nothing to do with the administration or the campaign.
Questions are swirling over Clovis' relationship with George Papadopoulos -- the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who has admitted to making a false statement to the FBI regarding his interactions with foreign officials close to the Russian government -- and a trip Papadopoulos took during the election where he met with a Russian figure.
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/sam-clovis-department-of-agriculture/index.html
Republicans Release Tax Plan, Cutting Corporate and Middle-Class Taxes
Source: New York Times
By JIM TANKERSLEY and THOMAS KAPLANNOV. 2, 2017
WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers are unveiling the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades, outlining a plan to cut taxes for corporations, reduce them for middle-class families and tilt the United States closer, but not entirely, toward the kind of tax system long championed by businesses, according to talking points circulated on Thursday.
The House plan, released after weeks of internal debate, conflict and delay, is far from final and will ignite a legislative and lobbying fight as Democrats, business groups and other special interests tear into the text ahead of a Republican sprint to get the legislation passed and to President Trump’s desk by Christmas.
The bill keeps a top rate of 39.6 percent for the highest-earners and roughly doubles the standard deduction for middle class families. It expands the child tax credit to $1,600 from $1,000 and will not make any changes to the 401(k) plans. It does propose changes to the popular mortgage interest deduction. Under the Republican plan, existing homeowners can keep their mortgage interest deduction but future purchases will be capped at $500,000. The bill cuts the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, from 35 percent.
According to the talking points, the bill “makes no changes to the popular retirement savings options that Americans have today — including 401(k)’s and Individual Retirement Accounts, or I.R.A.s. Americans will be able to continuing making both traditional, pretax contributions and ‘Roth’ contributions in the way that works best for them.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/us/politics/tax-plan-republicans.html
The 'golden past' is a crock - By Jennifer Rubin
By Jennifer Rubin November 2 at 9:00 AM
In a speech receiving the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, had some wise words on the state of politics in the West, and specifically in the United States. He warned that we’ve come to “indulge in magical thinking. So you get the far right dreaming of a golden past that never was and the far left yearning for a utopian future that never will be. And then comes populism, the belief that a strong leader can solve all our problems for us. And that is the first step down the road to tyranny, whether of the right or of the left.” He continued, later observing, “We need people willing to stand up and say, rich and poor alike, we all have collective responsibility for the common good. And we need a culture of responsibility, not one of victimhood, because if you define yourself as a victim, you can never be free.”
There is a lot to unpack there. Sacks certainly has figured out the populists’ routine.
The “golden past” that the Trumpian populists long for today takes many forms. They sanitize, romanticize and elevate the “Lost Cause” of the antebellum South. They dream of a pre-Great Society, even pre-New Deal government. They pine for America’s industrial world domination of the 1950s and 1960s. They seem enamored of a pre-Brown v. Board of Education and pre-Warren Court legal system. This nostalgia allows them to treat everything since then — from globalism to minority activists to gay marriage to justice reform — as a deviation, an intrusion into “real America.”
What others see as progress — enhanced civil rights for minorities, women and criminal defendants; the rise of robust capitalist democracies around the globe (who compete with us economically) — they see as losses. A sense of loss comes when you see things to which you believe you are entitled whittled away. If you have enjoyed cultural, economic and political dominance, it’s a bitter pill to see others reach parity or pass you by. And if you are convinced there is a finite number of jobs or other prizes, everyone who succeeds is poaching your opportunities.
Holding up the “golden past” allows President Trump and his ilk to stir anger, resentment and aggrievement. Not only can Trump present himself as the sole person — “he alone” — to solve his fans problems, but also he can cast anyone who criticizes him or checks his power (and his facts) to be obstructionist, evil, liars and more. There is no legitimate opposition and dissent (he rails at media that can “write anything they like”) because they are preventing the Great Leader from solving all our problems and returning us to the “golden past.”
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/02/the-golden-past-is-a-crock/?utm_term=.dfdb32902363
Trump claims a win over Obama: 'Warm rapport' with authoritarian Duterte, who called the US 'lousy'
By Aaron Blake November 1 at 3:47 PM
President Trump slipped something cryptic into his remarks to reporters on Wednesday: It was about his upcoming trip to the Philippines.
“You remember the Philippines — the last trip made by a president that turned out to be not so good,” Trump said. “Never quite got to land.”
It was, in fact, the second day in a row that Trump mentioned the last administration’s failure to “land” in the Philippines. On Tuesday, he said, “We’re going to the Philippines, which is a strategically important location where the previous administration was not exactly welcome, as you probably remember.”
Trump is no stranger to attacking former president Barack Obama. But these asides — in which he seems to be bragging about his ability to woo Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in a way Obama didn’t — are exceedingly strange.
The first reason is that Obama actually called off his meeting with Duterte — not the Philippines. So it’s unclear what Trump means when he says the Obama administration “was not exactly welcome.”
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/01/trump-claims-a-win-over-obama-warm-rapport-with-authoritarian-duterte-who-called-the-u-s-lousy
Pollsters: Democrats will lose unless they turn 'rigged' message back on Trump
By David Weigel November 2 at 7:00 AM
Warning of a “weakening Democratic brand,” pollsters working for a progressive nonprofit are encouraging the minority party to run on a clear, populist platform in 2018 — or risk an election where voters don’t see them as alternatives to the Trump administration.
“Trump is hated, but he is not collapsing and is stable on many parts of his identity and job performance,” pollsters Stan Greenberg and Nancy Zdunkewicz wrote in a polling memo prepared for Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, a nonprofit organization. “Democrats must make the main choice in this election about how the Republicans in Congress have gone back on their promises on health care and protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
The poll results, which were provided to The Washington Post on Wednesday night, revisit a pool of voters from the “rising American electorate” — young, diverse and less prone to voting — that was first studied in June. Since the summer, despite President Trump’s struggles, those voters told the pollsters that they’d become a bit less inclined to vote for Democrats in 2018. A 31-point Democratic margin shrank to a 21-point margin.
The problem, according to Greenberg and Zdunkewicz, was a president who blotted out the sun. “It shows a weakening of the Democratic brand, as events and Trump following Bannon’s advice leaves Democrats invisible on the economy and jobs,” they write. “Because voters do not hear Democrats expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo on economics or the balance of power when so many are concerned about the direction of this country, only 4-in-10 … voters say Democrats ‘know what it’s like to live a day in my shoes’ and are ‘for the right kind of change.'”
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/11/02/pollsters-democrats-will-lose-unless-they-turn-rigged-message-back-on-trump
Blue Dog Dems back bipartisan health bill
Source: The Hill
BY JESSIE HELLMANN - 11/02/17 08:57 AM EDT
A group of centrist Democrats on Thursday endorsed the Senate's bipartisan plan to shore up ObamaCare's insurance markets.
The Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 18 centrist Democrats, hopes its support could build momentum to create a similar bill in the House.
"This endorsement is a call to action in the House to develop a bill that mirrors the Alexander-Murray health care legislation and bring it to the floor for full consideration,” said Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.), Blue Dog co-chair for policy.
“The American people are counting on us to move quickly to limit the negative effects of the President’s executive order to cut funding for cost sharing reduction payments. They deserve peace of mind when it comes to health insurance costs and access to good health care."
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/358384-blue-dog-dems-back-bipartisan-health-bill
Clinton: 'Most Serious People' Understand Dossier Funding Was Legal
Source: Talking Points Memo
By NICOLE LAFOND Published NOVEMBER 2, 2017 7:54 AM
Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday defended Democrats and her campaign’s funding of an explosive, but still mostly unverified, dossier that alleged connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Appearing on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah,” Clinton claimed that “most serious people” would understand that the dossier was legal opposition research, and much different than allegations that the Trump campaign may have worked with Russians to influence the 2016 election.
“I think most serious people understand that,” she said. “This was research started by a Republican donor during the Republican primary, and then when Trump got the nomination for the Republican Party, the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer. … He said ‘yes.’ He’s an experienced lawyer, he knows what the law is, he knows what opposition research is.”
Touching on the investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, she called Trump “ambivalent” and said her former opponent “had to know” that people who were working for him were making contacts with Russia.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/clinton-serious-people-understand-dossier-legal
In Midst Of Russia Probe, Papadopoulos Pondered Run For Congress, Book Deal
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published NOVEMBER 2, 2017 6:00 AM
Being under federal investigation hasn’t stopped former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos from trying to advance his career.
Four months ago, shortly before he was arrested for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russian nationals during the campaign, he asked his followers on LinkedIn for their “thoughts” on him pursuing a congressional run. In October, around the time he pleaded guilty to those allegations, he expressed interest “in meeting with prominent publisher” and queried his LinkedIn connections for recommendations. And just a week ago, before his case was unsealed, Papadopoulos put out a call for “speaker bureau recommendations.”
This might seem like a remarkable degree of hubris for someone facing felony charges. But it represents a pattern for the 30-year-old Chicago native, who leveraged an inflated resume and the chaos of the crowded 2016 Republican primary into advisory roles on two major presidential campaigns.
On LinkedIn, a platform designed for self-promotion, Papadopoulos’ penchant for self-inflation stands out, dating back to his years at DePaul University, where he graduated in 2009 with a degree in political science.
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/papadopoulos-linkedin-congress-book-publisher-history-resume-embellishing
Rick Perry suggests fossil fuels help prevent sexual assault
Source: The Hill
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 11/02/17 09:12 AM EDT
Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested Thursday that expanding the use of fossil fuels could help prevent sexual assault.
Speaking during an energy policy discussion about energy policy with “Meet the Press’” Chuck Todd and Axios CEO and founder Jim VandeHei, Perry discussed his recent trip to Africa. He said a young girl told him that energy is important to her because she often reads by the light of a fire with toxic fumes.
"But also from the standpoint of sexual assault,” Perry said. “When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will on those types of acts.”
https://twitter.com/Timothy_Cama/status/926064308957655041
Perry said that using fossil fuel to push power into remote villages in Africa is necessary and will have a “positive role” in peoples’ lives. President Trump has called for expanding domestic production of fossil fuels to export.
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Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/358386-rick-perry-fossil-fuels-will-help-prevent-sexual-assault
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
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