Friday News: “The Closing of Trump’s America”; Trump Wages War on EPA, Pressures Park Service, etc.

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday January 27.

• The Politics of Cowardice (“We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards. Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds…as president his is a policy of cowardice. On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell.”)
• The Closing of Trump’s America (“Great. Terrific. Phenomenal. Tremendous. Fabulous. Beautiful. How Trump has hollowed out these words. How arid, even nauseating, he has made them. They mean nothing. They are space-fillers issuing with a thudding regularity from his uncurious mind, and in the end of course they are all about him. Emptying words of meaning is an essential step on the road to autocratic rule. People need to lose their bearings before they prostrate themselves…This is worse than had seemed possible: Trump’s inexhaustible obsession with the crowd size at the inauguration; his constant untruths; his perverse inability to accept that he won the election, to the point that he wants to investigate the popular vote that he lost; his startling lust for torture, walls, banishment and carnage.”)
• Krugman: Making the Rust Belt Rustier
• Trump’s Mexico Tantrum (“A tax on Mexican imports would be paid by Americans who buy those good”)
• Trump pressured Park Service to find proof for his crowd size claims (Not acceptable. At all.)
• The Bannon coup
• White House threatens Mexico with tax to pay for wall (“The wall” is an idiotic idea and should not be paid for by anyone, Americans or Mexicans. Trump’s an idiot.)
• White House Sows Confusion Over Plan to Tax Imports (What a mess.)
• Sure, President Trump, let’s investigate voter fraud — along with all the other problems with free and fair voting in America (There’s no evidence of any significant voter fraud, but there IS evidence of massive voter suppression by Republicans.)
• It turns out Jared Kushner and Sean Spicer are also registered to vote in two states
• Trump Makes Good on His Nativist Campaign Promises
• Just say no: On both political and moral grounds, Democrats should oppose all Trump appointees
• Mutiny at Foggy Bottom: State Department management resigns en masse
• Trump’s Hollowed-Out State Department (“Abrupt departures of top officials Wednesday, under disputed circumstances, leave Foggy Bottom without a confirmed secretary or nominees for several top leadership jobs.”)
• Demonstrators flood the streets of Philadelphia to protest Donald Trump at GOP retreat
• After his first week on the job, President Trump’s approval rating is 36 percent
• Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’
• The More Trump Hates, the More America Rejects His Hatred (“Whites and men elected him. But polls show they didn’t support his attacks on immigrants, Muslims, and women.”)
• Trump’s Yuge Week One (“What really mattered, and what didn’t.”)
• Trump risks isolating critical neighbor with Mexico feud
• Trump and congressional Republicans share a laugh about murders in Chicago (“A ‘president for all Americans,’ indeed.”)
• Trump says he doesn’t need facts as long as ‘very smart’ Fox News viewers agree with him (“Trump’s first interview as president illustrated how Fox News is becoming Trump propaganda.”)
• Trump Praises Fox News, Claims “Much” Of The Media “Is Fake News” (“During Interview With Sean Hannity, Trump Lashes Out At Media Outlets For Calling Out His Lies, Claiming ‘They Make Things Up'”)
• Yet another Trump official with curiously familiar words(“On Nov. 19, 2015, McGahn, then a partner with the firm Jones Day representing the Trump campaign, filed a brief with the Federal Election Commission that looked like a cut-and-paste of a brief filed by another respondent 15 days earlier. A chunk of more than 300 words, essentially the entire analysis, is a word-for-word reproduction of the other brief.”)
• Trump is his administration’s own worst enemy on foreign policy (“President Trump’s aides have seemingly worked nonstop to put out fires lit by their boss.”)
• We ignore Trump at our peril (“The president’s outlandish statements have real-life consequences.”)
• Why a tweeting president is so bad for our politics (“President Trump’s tweeting raises the prospect of a serious abuse of power.”)
• Trump’s government looks an awful lot like a badly run business (“No wonder his companies kept going bankrupt.”)
• FDR started the Long Peace. Under Trump, it may be coming to an end. (“Trump has begun to reverse the stable world order established by FDR.”)
• If May embraces Trump, her ‘global Britain’ is doomed
• Trump Wants to Slash the EPA’s Workforce and Budget, Transition Official Says (Trump’s war on the EPA continues.)
• Trump’s Team at EPA Vetting ‘Controversial’ Public Meetings and Presentations (“The mood is dark as Trump takes over the environmental agency he pledged to reduce to ‘little tidbits.'”)
• Kaine stopped by TSA over harmonica
• Virginia Sen. Mark Warner to oppose Sessions for attorney general (Good; no Democrat should support Sessions.)
• Bill to require recorded votes dies on an unrecorded vote, again (That says it all right there.)
• Senate majority leader under fire for bill that reduces punishment for child porn production
• Virginia’s legislature looks at coastal flooding, hurricane preparedness bills, but money is an issue (“A bill to create a secretary for coastal protection and flooding adaption in the Virginia governor’s Cabinet has reached the floor of the state Senate.”)
• Republican welfare reform bill advances; critic calls it ‘mean spirited’
• McAuliffe: General Assembly budget plan for raises could ‘hurt’ teachers
• Virginia GOP lawmakers threaten to derail Metro safety body — but maybe only temporarily (House Democratic Leader David Toscano “called the amendment ‘a hand grenade being rolled into the middle of the room. It totally blows up a process that a lot of people worked on, at the very last minute.'”
• Va. Senate votes to expand use of marijuana oil to treat more illnesses
• Editorial: Fast-track broadband bill to dust bin
• Richmond City Council authorized $77,000 in severance for three former council aides
• Subcommittee endorses new retirement option for Va. public employees
• In case you forgot what a brisk winter day feels like, we have a few coming up! (“Whoosh! January makes a blustery comeback with daily breeziness and high temperatures that are closer to average”)