After Donald Trump spent the weekend abandoning his pretense that he wants to make a deal to restore protections to the hundreds of thousands of immigrant kids whose Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections he unilaterally stripped, his spokesman Hogan Gidley went on Fox News on Monday to blame his decision on congressional Democrats and Barack Obama.
Asked about Trump’s announcement that there would be “no DACA deal,” the White House deputy press ...
Donald Trump
Pence secretly drafted Trump’s latest transgender military ban
When President Trump announced a new ban on transgender people serving in the military late Friday, it was somewhat of a surprise — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had reportedly recommended in February that Trump allow transgender people to serve. It turns out that Vice President Pence and some of the country’s most prominent anti-LGBTQ activists had a role in reversing the outcome, which explains why the report explaining the decision is rife with anti-trans junk science.
Slate...
In bizarre opioid speech, Trump barely mentions treatment but has a lot to say about immigrants
In a strange Monday afternoon speech on opioid policy, President Donald Trump dedicated the bulk of his time to ideas that would be likely to worsen the crisis.
Reporters who had been briefed on the administration’s plans ahead of time wrote that the White House seeks to put force behind a 12-point guideline for the proper, safe prescribing of opioids that has languished for two years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released them. The move would be a rare ...
Trump’s new economic adviser is really bad at economics. Here are the receipts.
Larry Kudlow is President Donald Trump’s choice to replace Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council (NEC). Cohn spent over 25 years at Goldman Sachs, and was president and COO for ten years before he joined the Trump administration. Past NEC directors have had law degrees from Yale or Harvard or Cornell, MBAs from Harvard or Wharton (not a bachelor’s with an economics major like the president), a Ph. D in economics from Harvard or MIT, decades of business experien...
Trump’s hastily passed tax law is error-riddled
After years of dishonestly whining that the Affordable Care Act was written in secret and rushed through Congress with insufficient debate, Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration cobbled together their tax legislation in December and rushed it through Congress. Now, it appears, America is paying the price for their shoddy work.
Desperate to pass the bill — which contained massive tax cuts for President Trump and the very rich, and tax increases for many poor an...
Ted Cruz admits he just ignores Trump’s scandals
After calling candidate Donald Trump a “pathological liar” and “narcissist” during the 2016 presidential campaign, one might have thought that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) would have emerged as a critic of the president’s mounting ethical issues. He has not — and in an unusually candid comment on Wednesday, he made it clear why.
Asked about the chaotic Trump presidency on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Cruz said that he simply ignores the chaos and s...
Trump criticizes ailing John McCain for blocking health care reform vote
Trump renewed his criticism of John McCain for the senator’s dramatic thumbs-down deciding vote last year against the GOP health care repeal.
Happy Presidents’ Day! Meet the five most underrated American presidents
The institution of the presidency’s had a bad year.
With a few exceptions, Donald Trump makes all of his predecessors look good. There was a time when the President of the United States did not spend hours at a time watching cable news. Or when they didn’t compare the size of their, um, “Nuclear Button” to that of other foreign leaders. At least in recent decades, there was also a time when the White House’s immigration policies weren’t guided by ...
How Trump’s budget would cut the safety net for the poorest Americans
Trump’s vision for the budget adds to the deficit while cutting domestic programs such as food stamps that benefit people in need
Donald Trump’s budget proposal, unveiled on Monday, revived his calls for big cuts to domestic programs that benefit the poor and middle class, such as food stamps, as well as plans to entirely eliminate several arts and earth sciences funding.
The president, who is looking for large increases in military spending, is also proposing work requirements...