Source: Associated Press




By MARY CLARE JALONICK
1 hour ago

LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — Schools won't have to cut more salt from meals just yet and some will be able to serve kids fewer whole grains, under changes to federal nutrition standards announced Monday.

The move by the Trump administration partially rolls back rules championed by former first lady Michelle Obama as part of her healthy eating initiative.

As his first major action in office, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the department will delay an upcoming requirement to lower the amount of sodium in meals while continuing to allow waivers for regulations that all grains on the lunch line must be 50 percent whole grain. Schools could also serve 1 percent flavored milk instead of the nonfat now required.

"If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the program," said Perdue, who traveled to a school in Leesburg, Virginia, to make the announcement.

Read more: https://www.apnews.com/81e28e35eeed4fed98c46a49f32044cd/Trump-administration-to-roll-back-some-school-meal-standards?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP_Politics

In an interview with Bloomberg News published on Monday, President Donald Trump claimed that infighting in his White House had subsided—infighting that a month ago was described by administration officials to The Daily Beast as “nonstop.” In doing so, Trump praised his White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who just last month the president was publicly dissing.

Trump also revealed his own nickname for Bannon’s nationalist (and hard-right) ideology: "alt-left," a riff on the term “alt-right,” for which Bannon previously said the website Breitbart served as “the platform.”

“Bannon’s more of a libertarian than anything else, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told Bloomberg News.

Bannon does not identify as libertarian; he self-IDs as a right-wing, anti-globalist “nationalist,” and libertarians widely loathe Bannon. Bannon has, however, once called himself a “Leninist,” in style if not substance or ideology. Ironically, when Steve Bannon tried to set up a Breitbart India, the Mumbai-based writer Amit Varma, who he met with to launch the enterprise, rejected the idea on the grounds of being a pro-immigration, pro-gay-rights libertarian, as The Daily Beast reported in March.

—Asawin Suebsaeng

###

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/05/01/trump-steve-bannon-is-actually-alt-left?via=desktop&source=copyurl

Source: Variety



MAY 1, 2017 | 02:03PM PT

Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recalled the scene at Mar-a-Lago on April 6, when the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping was interrupted by the strike on Syria.

“Just as dessert was being served, the president explained to Mr. Xi he had something he wanted to tell him, which was the launching of 59 missiles into Syria,” Ross said. “It was in lieu of after-dinner entertainment.” As the crowd laughed, Ross added: “The thing was, it didn’t cost the president anything to have that entertainment.”

Ross, a billionaire financier, is new to government service. In the lunchtime conversation with David Rubenstein, co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, Ross reflected on his first impressions of public service.

“I’ve been heartened,” he said. “I thought the quality of people in the government was not as high as it has turned out to be. There are actually quite a lot of very good, very serious, very intelligent people wanting to do their best. It’s just they’ve been trapped in a fundamentally dysfunctional system.”

Read more: http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/wilbur-ross-commerce-secretary-syria-missile-strike-tax-cuts-1202405269/

President Trump’s revisionist, Andrew Jackson-related history can be traced to none other than Steve Bannon.

ASAWIN SUEBSAENG0 5.01.17 11:07 AM ET

-snip-

If you’re wondering why Donald Trump enjoys chatting about Andrew Jackson so much, the answer to that question is Stephen Bannon, the chief strategist in the Trump White House.

As The Daily Beast reported in March, Bannon has, since the 2016 presidential campaign, actively pushed Trump to learn more about Jackson and to play up comparisons, however flawed, between Jackson’s populism and Trumpian nationalist-populist rhetoric and themes. In March, Trump even made a high-profile visit to Jackson’s Nashville tomb, where Trump solemnly saluted the deceased president.

President Trump’s love affair with the ghost of President Jackson is a relatively newfound one. For instance, @realDonaldTrump’s only other pre-2017 tweet about Jackson was tweeted in July 2013, when he wrote: “Interesting… the last time a Democrat succeeded a two-term Democratic pres. was in 1836 when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson.”
Bannon, the former head of Breitbart and a longtime “history nerd,” would often discuss Jackson’s historical legacy and image with Trump on, and after, the campaign trail, and how the two political figures had a lot in common, according to officials in the Trump campaign, presidential transition, and administration speaking to The Daily Beast.

“During the race, Trump would say he had heard this pundit or this person making the comparison, and Steve would encourage him and tell him how it was true,” a Trump campaign adviser, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said in March. “It was a way to flatter Trump, too. Bannon and Trump talked about a lot, but this was the president they had casual conversations about the most.”

According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, Bannon had suggested and had given Trump a “reading list” of articles and biographies on Jackson, and literature on Jacksonian democracy and populism. Stephen Miller, another top Trump adviser, also recommended and offered related reading material to Trump, one senior Trump administration official said.

-snip-

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/01/donald-trump-s-andrew-jackson-civil-war-answer-is-all-steve-bannon

By DeNeen L. Brown May 1 at 10:20 AM



“Stop the Runaway,” Andrew Jackson urged in an ad placed in the Tennessee Gazette in October 1804. The future president gave a detailed description: A “Mulatto Man Slave, about thirty years old, six feet and an inch high, stout made and active, talks sensible, stoops in his walk, and has a remarkable large foot, broad across the root of the toes — will pass for a free man.…”

Jackson, who would become the country’s seventh commander in chief in 1829, promised anyone who captured this “Mulatto Man Slave” a reward of $50, plus “reasonable” expenses paid. Jackson added a line that some historians find particularly cruel.

It offered “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”

The ad was signed, “ANDREW JACKSON, Near Nashville, State of Tennessee.”

Jackson, whose face is on the $20 bill and to whom President Trump paid homage in March, owned about 150 enslaved people at The Hermitage, his estate near Nashville, when he died in 1845, according to records. On Monday, President Trump created a furor when he suggested in an interview an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito that Jackson could have prevented the Civil War.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/04/11/hunting-down-runaway-slaves-the-cruel-ads-of-andrew-jackson-and-the-master-class/?utm_term=.a16a6965ca70&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/thats-not-an-american-value-cnns-jake-tapper-issues-brutal-takedown-of-trumps-dictator-praise/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2017/05/01/judge-a-man-by-the-company-he-keeps-thats-from-donald-trumps-favorite-book/?utm_term=.e178021814d0&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

The courts have interpreted the First Amendment so as to allow the Erik Wemple Blog to call people names. “Defamatory statements are those that harm a person’s reputation and are clearly more than insults,” writes David Schultz in the “Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court.” So it’s perfectly legal to state:

Reince Priebus is a dunderhead.
Reince Priebus is a lunkhead.
Reince Priebus is a ninny.
Reince Priebus is a dunderpate.
Reince Priebus is a birdbrain.

Grounds for all those statements come from an " target="_blank">interview between Priebus, President Trump’s chief of staff, and Jonathan Karl of ABC News.



Asked about candidate Trump’s pledge to “open up” libel laws, Priebus indicated that it’s “something that is being looked at, but it’s something that as far as how it gets executed, where we go with it — that’s another issue.” Another fantasyland issue, that is. For a president who cannot wrangle a premier campaign issue — replacing Obamacare — through the legislative process, changing libel jurisprudence would pose a challenge that journalists would enjoy documenting. Surely Trump would declare at some point: “Nobody knew the separation of powers could be so complicated.” Which is to say, Priebus, Trump & Co. can’t just write an executive order to adjust libel laws.

Although this group of dunderheads might give it a try.

###

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/05/01/reince-priebus-is-a-dunderhead-and-he-cant-sue-me-for-saying-so/?utm_term=.92c7c3d4e4bc&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

‘I do my best not to listen to what he says’: Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh offers strategy for continuing to back Trump

Appearing on MSNBC Monday afternoon, ex-congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) defended President Donald Trump while admitting that he tries his best to ignore the things said.

Appearing with host Katy Tur, Walsh took up the topic of Trump stating he would be “honored” to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. “As a Trump supporter I do my best not to listen to what he says,” Walsh told Tur. “I’ll tell you what, if I pulled my hair out for every nutty thing he said, I’d be bald. ”

“Look, ” he continued. “To say that you would be honored to meet with Kim Jong-Un is beyond offensive. And I’m sorry, everyone gives Sean Spicer a pass, he’s got the most difficult job in the world — that’s an easy one to slap away. There is no way Trump should have said ‘honored.'”

“Congressman, if you say you have to ignore most of what the president says, why are you still a Trump supporter?” Tur pressed.

“Katy, it’s not an easy job,” Walsh replied. “I try to focus on what he does, but I’ll be the first to acknowledge, that, look, he makes it very difficult.”

more + video
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/i-do-my-best-not-to-listen-to-what-he-says-ex-rep-joe-walsh-offers-strategy-for-continuing-to-back-trump/

by Aidan McLaughlin | 1:22 pm, May 1st, 2017

After playing a clip of the interview on her show, Andrea Mitchell asked Michael Steele, former head of the Republican National Committee and MSNBC political commentator, about the comments.

“I think he’s re-writing history,” Mitchell said.

Steele — jokingly — suggested the reason for the war was “probably because of the resistance by the North, and not so much what the South was doing.”

He then told Mitchell these historically-challenged comments are part of a larger pattern:

Again, there’s a clear lack of understanding of the history of this country, particularly with matters related to race and civil rights, and the Civil War.

more + video
http://www.mediaite.com/trump/ex-rnc-chair-president-trump-has-a-clear-lack-of-understanding-of-the-history-this-country/