Tag Archives: Trump administration

Chris Johnson reports at the Washington Blade: As President Trump continues to praise his administration’s plan to beat the HIV epidemic by 2030, a top Trump administration official says an immigrant’s HIV status is enough to justify family separation at the border. Brian Hastings, chief of Customs & Border Patrol, made the remarks during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing …

ABC News reports: Attorney General Bill Barr announced Thursday the federal government will be resuming capital punishment. In the announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said the decision was made related to “five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society — children and the elderly.” The DOJ further added …

NBC News reports: Hundreds of prominent human rights organizations, presidential candidates, Democratic senators and religious leaders are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights. A trio of letters sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and obtained by NBC News, accuse the State Department of sidelining rights for women and the LGBTQ community in …

Reuters reports: The Trump administration on Tuesday will propose a rule to tighten food stamp restrictions that would cut about 3.1 million people from the program, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said. Currently, 43 U.S. states allow residents to automatically become eligible for food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, if they receive benefits from …

Politico reports: Vice President Mike Pence was one short plane ride away from shaking hands with an alleged interstate drug dealer. Pence abruptly canceled his trip to Manchester, N.H., earlier this month but never said why he was pulled from Air Force Two at the last minute. Jeff Hatch, who agreed in federal court Friday to plead guilty and will …

NPR reports: The Trump administration is planning changes to the U.S. citizenship test. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it is revising the test to ensure that “it continues to serve as an accurate measure of a naturalization applicant’s civics knowledge.” The test was introduced in 1986 and last revised in 2008. In a USCIS statement, acting Director Ken …

Politico reports: Constant infighting among top officials. Sudden departures of senior staffers without explanation. A leader who is disengaged and prone to falling asleep in meetings. The Commerce Department has reached its apex of dysfunction under Wilbur Ross, according to four people with knowledge of the inner workings of the department. The 81-year-old Commerce secretary, who has for months endured …

Talking Points Memo reports: A former Trump voter fraud commissioner will apologize to citizens he wrongly described as noncitizens in reports claiming mass voter fraud in Virginia, according to a tentative settlement agreement reached this week in a lawsuit brought against the commissioner. J. Christian Adams and his group the Public Interest Legal Foundation were sued last year over the …

The Guardian reports: The US government has rejected a proposed ban on a toxic pesticide linked to brain damage in children, dismissing a growing body of research on the health hazards of a widely used agricultural chemical. The EPA announced in a ruling Thursday that it supported farmers’ continued use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that growers have long sprayed on …

The New York Times reports: A new report by staff members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the safety of the nation’s 59 aging nuclear power plants, recommends that the commissioners significantly weaken or reduce safety inspections of the plants. The report, published Tuesday, comes after a yearlong consultation and public meeting process, including views from the Nuclear Energy …

Talking Points Memo reports: The ACLU has won its legal war with the Trump administration over a census citizenship question, but it’s not backing down from its demand that certain administration officials be sanctioned for allegedly false testimony in the case. In a court filing Tuesday evening, the ACLU alleged that top Trump administration officials in the Justice Department and …

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department will not bring federal charges against a New York City police officer in the death of Eric Garner, ending a yearslong inquiry into a case that sharply divided officials and prompted national protests over excessive force by the police, according to three people briefed on the decision. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn intend …

Politico reports: White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday defied a congressional subpoena, refusing to show up for testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee about her violations of the Hatch Act, and prompting House Democrats to threaten to hold her in contempt of Congress. In a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the chairman of the panel, White …

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump has told aides and allies that he is considering removing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross after a stinging Supreme Court defeat on adding a citizenship question to the census, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. While Trump has previously expressed frustration with the 81-year-old Ross, in particular over failed trade negotiations, Ross’s long …

CNBC reports: Incoming acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella will take the helm of the department following the resignation Friday of Alex Acosta, who faced scrutiny over his role in prosecuting alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago. But Pizzella, currently deputy Labor secretary, has his own controversial past that will likely come to the fore. Democratic senators …

Quartz reports: A large, framed photo of far-right commentator Tomi Lahren posing with US Border Patrol officials hangs prominently on the wall of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC. A person with access to the area described the setting and shared a picture of it with Quartz. Lahren, a vocal supporter of US president Donald Trump, has called immigrants “shifty …

The Huffington Post reports: President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is dropping his administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, an abrupt reversal that came after Trump repeatedly insisted he would push ahead with trying to add the question. Rather than add the question to the 2020 census, which will go to every household in …

GLAAD has published a report on the people on the State Department’s so-called “Natural Law” commission, which formally launched earlier this week. As you’d expect, all of them are viciously anti-LGBT. Peter Berkowitz — Criticized the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling overturning sodomy laws as “dangerous,” writing that “Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion seemed to follow the logic of his moral and …

Science Magazine reports: A March news release from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) touted a new study that could be useful for infrastructure planning along the California coastline. At least that’s how President Donald Trump’s administration conveyed it. An earlier draft of the news release, written by researchers, was sanitized by Trump administration officials, who removed references to the dire …

Bloomberg reports: Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper has proposed new exceptions from a pledge to recuse himself from decisions involving his former employer Raytheon Co., reflecting his move to the top of Pentagon decision-making. Esper, who was the defense contractor’s chief lobbyist before coming to the Defense Department, sold his Raytheon stock in early 2018 under an agreement reached with …