Trump Administration

Mediaite reports: White House trade advisor Navarro gave an interview to MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson the day after the debate, and she pressed him on Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when asked to condemn racist groups. “Why didn’t the president denounce more strongly the Proud Boys in that moment, Peter?” Jackson asked. “I think that …

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is preparing an immigration enforcement blitz next month that would target arrests in U.S. cities and jurisdictions that have adopted “sanctuary” policies, according to three U.S. officials who described a plan with public messaging that echoes the president’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, known informally as the “sanctuary …

Politico reports: The prosecution of Michael Flynn. A Senate investigation into the provenance of the Steele Dossier. The nascent federal probe of discarded absentee ballots in Pennsylvania. In recent days, the Justice Department has declassified or disclosed sensitive materials related to each of these proceedings that, on the surface, have little to do with each other. Yet within hours, President …

The New York Times reports: Top White House officials pressured the CDC this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school, a strikingly political intervention in one of the most sensitive public health debates of the pandemic, according to documents and interviews with current and former government officials. As part of their behind-the-scenes effort, White House …

Raw Story reports: On Monday, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross “has announced a target date of October 5, 2020 to conclude 2020 Census self-response and field data collection operations.” This comes despite an order by a federal judge on Friday directing the census to continue through October 31. The initial decision of the bureau to …

NBC News reports: The director of the CDC has grown increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump, pushed by a new member of his coronavirus task force, is sharing incorrect information about the pandemic with the public. Dr. Robert Redfield suggested in a conversation with a colleague Friday that Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data about a range …

CNBC reports: A federal judge has temporarily blocked an order from the Trump administration that would have banned TikTok from being downloaded from U.S. app stores. At the end of the day on Sunday, the U.S. government could have forced app stores run by Apple and Google to remove TikTok. But after a hearing on Sunday, Judge Carl Nichols of …

“What we actually have is new guidance that’s coming out. My question is, why would that new guidance come out after we’ve already spent 30 billion dollars in doing that? And my challenge to the FDA is just make sure it’s based on science. Science and real numbers. “And so as we look at that, we’re making very good progress. …

The Hollywood Reporter reports: Dennis Quaid and gospel singer CeCe Winans have each taken to social media to clarify the non-political intent of participating in interviews related to COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic. According to a report from Politico on Friday, an ad was ordered by President Trump and conceived partly by former Department of Health and Human Services official …

Politico reports: The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds. The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 …

Peter Montgomery reports at Right Wing Watch: Ralph Drollinger, who teaches members of Trump’s ​Cabinet and members of Congress that the Bible requires Christian officeholders to support right-wing policies, will announce during this weekend’s “The Return” rally the launch of a new Bible study for subcabinet officials in the Trump administration, the right-wing Epoch Times reported this week. According to …

The Hill reports: A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the White House must provide sign language interpreters during public coronavirus briefings starting Oct. 1. A U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C. ordered the White House to include a qualified American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for any news conference related to coronavirus matters conducted by the president, vice president or …

“That the circuit judge out of Florida – Lagoa I believe is how you pronounce her name. Cuban-American, she’s been on the court for about three and a half minutes, you know, maybe two or three years, no significant cases as a federal judge. “Being pushed very hard by the Republican delegation in Florida, mostly for political reasons. This is …

The Buffalo News reports: Michael R. Caputo, the East Aurora political consultant at the center of controversy over the Trump administration’s Covid-19 messaging, has been diagnosed with cancer. Assemblyman David J. DiPietro, R-East Aurora, acting as Caputo’s spokesman, said Thursday that the HHS spokesman on leave from his assistant secretary post has “squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck …

The Washington Post reports: A senior executive at the U.S. Postal Service delivered a PowerPoint presentation in July that pressed officials across the organization to make the operational changes that led to mail backups across the country, seemingly contradicting months of official statements about the origin of the plans, according to internal documents. The presentation stands in contrast with agency …

The Washington Post reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought his campaign to redefine and prioritize human rights to the United Nations on Wednesday, declaring that such protections around the world are in “crisis.” Pompeo delivered his remarks via videotape during a U.S.-hosted event at the United Nations General Assembly. He quickly pivoted from the 1948 U.N. declaration that is …

The Washington Post reports: The Department of Justice asked Congress on Wednesday to adopt a new law that would hold Facebook, Google and Twitter legally accountable for the way they moderate content on the Web, as the Trump administration ratchets up its attacks on social-media sites entering the 2020 election. The new request from the Justice Department came in the …

NBC News reports: The consulting firm where the wife of acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is an executive has been awarded more than $6 million in contracts from the Department of Homeland Security since September 2018, according to records on the federal government website USA Spending. Wolf became chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration, a DHS agency, …

Gothamist reports: The Department of Justice vowed to strip federal funding from New York and two other cities on Monday, following a legally dubious directive issued by President Trump earlier this month to withhold money from “anarchist jurisdictions.” While city leaders and New Yorkers mainly ridiculed the threatened cuts, the move was immediately celebrated by some of the city’s police …

The Washington Post reports: The Food and Drug Administration is expected to spell out a tough, new standard for an emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine as soon as this week that will make it exceedingly difficult for any vaccine to be cleared before Election Day. The agency is issuing the guidance to boost transparency and public trust as it …