After a period of extraordinary tension between President-elect Donald Trump and the nation's intelligence community, the president-elect's pick to run the CIA vowed Thursday to uphold the morale of America's career spies and said solid, unbiased intelligence is the "lifeblood" of national security that is "more in demand than ever." While the four-hour confirmation hearing on…
WASHINGTON -- A majority of Americans disapproved of the way Donald Trump is handling his transition, according to a Gallup poll that said the incoming president was at a historically low level in advance of the Jan. 20 inauguration. In a Gallup poll released Friday, 51 percent of Americans viewed Trump's transition negatively while 44 percent…
Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he was confident the next administration would stick to the same peaceful principles on Asian security as the current one, despite hawkish comments from President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
Referring to the disputed South China Sea, Kerry told a university audience in Ho Chi Minh City that countries, big or small, should refrain from provocation and any dispute should be resolved peacefully in accordance with international law.
Kerry said he was "confident the next administration will continue to adhere to the same good faith with the policies that I just articulated."
His comments came after his nominated replacement, Rex Tillerson, said the United States must send a clear signal to China that its island-building in the South China Sea must stop and that its access to those islands must not be allowed.
On Thursday, Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon, retired Marine General James Mattis, said Russia, China and Islamist militants were presenting the biggest challenge to the U.S.-led world order since World War Two, and called for Congress to lift spending caps undermining military readiness.
China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.
China has reclaimed seven reefs in the area, building man-made islands with anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries, satellite images show.
The United States would have to "wage a large-scale war" in the South China sea to prevent Chinese access to the islands, the influential state-run Chinese tabloid, the Global Times, said on Friday.
"Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories," the paper said.
The Philippines, which is seeking to improve ties with Beijing, said any U.S. action to drive China from the artificial islands would be its own prerogative, and in its own national interest.
Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay was replying to a question during a television interview about Tillerson's comments.
"They said that they would prevent China from doing or undertaking these kind of activity. If it wants to do that, they have the force to do so, let them do it," Yasay said.
China has built several artificial islands in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, which an arbitration tribunal in The Hague last year ruled unlawful.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated last month he wanted to avoid confrontation with China and saw no need to press Beijing to abide by the ruling.
Yasay earlier said the Philippines wanted to strengthen ties with the United States and that Washington should be an "influential force" in Asia and help maintain balance there.
He said he hoped the new government in Washington would refrain from criticising countries, as the Obama administration had over the Philippines’ deadly drugs war, and he welcomed Tillerson's views that decisions and comments should be based on facts.
(Additional reporting by Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Writing by My Pham and Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Members of a Bruce Springsteen cover band say they have received a tremendous amount of negative feedback since the announcement this week that they will be playing at an event during the inauguration festivities for President-elect Donald Trump.
The New York Times reported Friday that members of the band B Street played at the inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama in 2009 and were such a hit that they were asked back in 2013. They agreed to play the 2017 inauguration before the election and are now bearing the brunt of people's dissatisfaction with the incoming administration.
“I never saw this coming -- this part coming,” said B Street keyboardist and founder Willie Forte in an interview with the Times. “Are you asking me if, you know, if I would’ve reconsidered if I could go back in the beginning and I knew this was going to happen? Sure.”
Forte said that the band would agree to cancel their performance if Bruce Springsteen said he didn't want them performing his songs at the inauguration, but the band hasn't heard anything from the New Jersey rock icon, "thank God, so far."
Forte said B Street is not "a political band."
“I’ve gotten pushback from Springsteen fans that don’t know the reputation of our band or have never seen the band or talked to any of us,” he told the Times.
The event organizers -- the New Jersey State Society -- said they stand by B Street and are choosing to honor the occasion rather than the politics of the president-elect.
“Springsteen music is magic to the ears of our New Jersey members and guests, regardless of party,” said executive director of the New Jersey State Society Nancy Blades Fatemi in a statement. “It’s like, when you look at a Rembrandt or read Shakespeare, do you care what their politics were?"
“You can’t have an inaugural ball with a Jersey Shore boardwalk theme and not have great Jersey music,” Fatemi said. “Either the band or the D.J. will be playing Springsteen, Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, the music legends that make us proud as New Jerseyans.”
B Street, she added, are "the official band of the New Jersey State Society" and that the organization "would not consider any other group."
Forte told the Times that the band briefly considered canceling their performance after Trump won the election in November, but decided to honor their commitment.
“I grew up with a family that taught me that when you give a commitment, when you make a promise, when you sign a contract, you go through it,” he said. “I mean, I understand circumstances around it. But I don’t know if I have that type of integrity to break a contract on somebody, you know, in good faith.”
Forte said that the animosity directed at his band is partly because no bigger acts would agree to play Trump's inauguration.
“I think that a lot of the tension is because there’s no entertainment there,” he said. “Because everybody else is gone, we went way, way up on the top of the list and all of a sudden, we became the bullet, the target.”
The Trump transition team has struggled to find big name acts to perform at the 2017 inauguration. Elton John, Andrea Bocelli and U.K. singers Charlotte Church and Rebecca Ferguson have all declined invitations to perform.
"Your staff have asked me to sing at your inauguration, a simple Internet search would show I think you're a tyrant," said Church on Twitter, followed by a string of "poop" emojis.
A prominent Democratic congressman said Friday that lawmakers have an obligation to ensure their constituents have health care coverage, and he vowed to work with Republicans on replacing Obamacare if the law is soon repealed. Appearing on CNN on Friday morning, Rep. Tim Ryan, Ohio Democrat, said he believes its foolish for the GOP to scrap…
Dozens of U.S. farm and agri-business groups on Thursday urged President-elect Donald Trump to build upon progress made by the Obama administration in relations with Cuba, calling trade with the former Cold War foe particularly important at a time of a severe downturn in farm incomes.
The agricultural trade groups stated their views in a letter sent to Trump, who is to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
"As a broad cross-section of rural America, we urge you not to take steps to reverse progress made in normalizing relations with Cuba, but also solicit your support for the agricultural business sector to expand trade with Cuba," the letter said.
"It's time to put the 17 million American jobs associated with agriculture ahead of a few hardline politicians in Washington," the letter concluded.
Signatories included a wide range of agricultural trade groups, from the American Farm Bureau and American Feed Industry Association to the soy bean, corn, rice, wheat, peas, beans, cattle, poultry lobbies and other associations
The letter was arranged by the Washington-based Engage Cuba Coalition and USA Rice.
Agricultural organizations in states that Trump won, such as Idaho, Alabama and Georgia, were also signatories.
Trump, a Republican, has said he will dismantle the still fragile detente begun by President Barack Obama two years ago unless Cuba gives the United States a better deal, while providing no specifics.
The letter was sent before the White House announced on Thursday that it was ending a policy that granted residency to Cubans who arrived in the United States without visas, the latest bid by Obama to make his Cuba policy irreversible.
Trump is expected to review the Cuba engagement upon taking office and has named Jason Greenblatt, a Trump Organization executive and chief legal counsel, as negotiator for sensitive international issues, including Cuba.
Under an exception to the U.S. trade embargo from the year 2000, Cuba may import agricultural products for cash. The letter calls on Trump to allow normal trade financing and credit so the sector can better compete for the Cuban market.
While the sector has sold billions of dollars in products to Cuba over the years, the letter said sales have steadily declined as the embargo makes it difficult to compete with other suppliers. Cuba imports some $2 billion in food annually.
The signatories cited a deep dip in farm income to bolster their argument that U.S. farmers needed more trade.
"Net farm income is down 46 percent from just three years ago, constituting the largest three-year drop since the start of the Great Depression," the letter said.
(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Leslie Adler)
Republican lawmakers will begin voiding dozens of new U.S. regulations at the end of the month to fulfill their promise to undo Democratic President Barack Obama's legacy, focusing on environmental and labor rules, the House of Representatives' second most powerful Republican said on Thursday.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the Republicans who will shortly control both Congress and the White House for the first time in 10 years have made reforming federal regulation a top priority alongside repealing the Obamacare healthcare program and rewriting the tax code.
Republicans are on a blitz to radically reform the vast federal bureaucracy, where they say appointed officials create costly, burdensome red tape that stifles economic growth. Once Republican President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, they will have a like-minded ally in the Oval Office to sign their measures into law.
On the chopping block are dozens of new rules that the outgoing Obama administration has finalized since the end of May on energy, the environment, transportation, banking, finance, education and media ownership.
Republicans will ax them using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to void a single regulation for a brief window of time after it is issued.
Congress will begin a two-week marathon of voting to disapprove them on Jan. 30, according to McCarthy, who House aides say will lead the process. Disapproval resolutions can pass on simple majorities, giving Senate Democrats no power to block votes with filibusters.
McCarthy told the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution that two of the first votes will be on new environmental regulations. Republicans will seek to kill a contentious rule intended to protect streams and forests from the impact of coal mining and a regulation curbing methane leaks on public lands.
Congress will also take aim at new requirements for employers to report their workers' gender, race and ethnicity that are intended to help root out pay discrimination.
On Wednesday, the House approved a massive bill for creating accountability in rulemaking. The next day, it passed legislation largely along party lines requiring financial regulators to tally the costs of their rules.
Democrats, though, have vowed to block any reform bills, saying the many extra procedures they require will stall agencies' work, making it impossible to create needed regulations and properly oversee special interests.
(Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jonathan Oatis)
If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off…
Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev wrote a letter to his "doomed colleagues in the American media" about how they are now facing what Russian reporters have been facing for years.
"Congratulations, US media!" Kovalev wrote at Medium.com. "You’ve just covered your first press conference of an authoritarian leader with a massive ego and a deep disdain for your trade and everything you hold dear."
"We in Russia have been doing it for 12 years now -- with a short hiatus when our leader wasn’t technically our leader -- so quite a few things during Donald Trump’s press conference rang my bells. Not just mine, in fact -- read this excellent round-up in The Moscow Times," he went on.
Putin's press conferences, Kovalev said, are annual media spectacles at which "Putin always comes off as an omniscient and benevolent leader tending to a flock of unruly but adoring children."
President-elect Donald Trump's circus-like press conference on Wednesday, he said, showed that the former reality TV star is "apparently taking a page from Putin’s playbook."
To his American counterparts, Kovalev said, "You’re in this for at least another four years, and you’ll be dealing with things Russian journalists have endured for almost two decades now. I’m talking about Putin here, but see if you can apply any of the below to your own leader."
Welcome to the era of bullsh*t:
"Facts don’t matter," said Kovalev. "You can’t hurt this man with facts or reason. He’ll always outmaneuver you. He’ll always wriggle out of whatever carefully crafted verbal trap you lay for him."
Putin, he said, treats all interviews as a one-way conversation. When he's handed questions he doesn't like, he responds with "a bag of meaningless factoids (Putin likes to drown questions he doesn’t like in dull, unverifiable stats, figures and percentages), platitudes, false moral equivalences and straight, undiluted bullsh*t."
"He’ll mock you for your nervous stuttering and if you’re raising a serious issue, respond with a vague, non-committal statement," Kovalev warned.
Don't expect any camaraderie:
If you're hoping for support from your fellow journalists, you're bound to be disappointed, Kovalev said.
"These people are not your partners or brothers in arms. They are your rivals in a fiercely competitive, crashing market and right now the only currency in this market is whatever that man on the stage says," he warned. "It’s in this man’s best interests to pit you against each other, fighting over artificial scarcities like room space, mic time or, of course, his attention."
Russian media agencies now arrive at Putin press conferences with "large, bright placards aimed at attracting the president’s attention." The Russian president has made the press events into a game where reporters clamor like children for his attention.
Expect a lot of sycophancy and softballs from your “colleagues”:
"A mainstay of Putin’s press conferences is, of course, softball questions. Which also happen to be Putin’s favorites. Mr President, is there love in your heart? Who you will be celebrating New Year’s Eve with? What’s your favorite food?" Kovalev said.
Other times Putin will take questions of little importance so he can eat up time posturing and making himself look like an attentive, authoritative leader.
"There will be people from publications that exist for no other reason than heaping fawning praise on him and attacking his enemies," Kovalev wrote. "But there will also be one token critic who will be allowed to ask a 'sharp' question, only to be drowned in a copious amount of bullshit, and the man on the stage will always be the winner ('See? I respect the media and free speech')."
You’re always losing
"This man owns you," said Kovalev. "He understands perfectly well that he is the news. You can’t ignore him. You’re always playing by his rules -- which he can change at any time without any notice. You can’t -- in Putin’s case -- campaign to vote him out of office. Your readership is dwindling because ad budgets are shrinking -- while his ratings are soaring, and if you want to keep your publication afloat, you’ll have to report on everything that man says as soon as he says it, without any analysis or fact-checking, because 1) his fans will not care if he lies to their faces; 2) while you’re busy picking his lies apart, he’ll spit out another mountain of bullshit and you’ll be buried under it."
He concluded, "I could go on and on, but I think at this point you see where this is heading. See if any of this rings any bells if you covered Trump’s presser or watched it online."
The hedge funds and insurance companies that want financially strapped Puerto Rico to pay them back in full may have found a new ally: Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. The newly elected governor of Puerto Rico is in discussions to hire Lewandowski’s lobbying firm, at a time when the island’s creditors are hoping that…
During a House speech on Thursday by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), C-SPAN was knocked off the air by Russia Today, an English-language network run by the Russian government.
Think Progress reported that around 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, Waters was delivering a speech in which she questioned whether the Trump administration's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can be trusted to act impartially with regards to Russia.
“I urge my colleagues to join me, investor and consumer advocates, public pension plans, civil rights groups, labor unions and supporters of financial reform in opposing H.R. 78 to ensure that the actions of Trump’s SEC are in the interests of Americans’ economic stability and not in Russia’s or Wall Street’s interest,” Waters said. “At this time, with the bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the SEC, and literally obliterate -- "
At that moment, C-SPAN's feed disappeared and was replaced by programming from Russia Today.
The network posted a notice later in the afternoon that the interruption was caused by "an internal routing issue."
Aaron Rupar said at Think Progress, "The incident occurs six days after the U.S. intelligence community released its declassified intelligence report about Russia’s meddling in the presidential election. A significant portion of it details RT’s efforts to help Donald Trump." Watch the video, embedded below:
On Thursday, journalist and The View panelist Sunny Hostin went off on Donald Trump and his ongoing war against the media.
Referring to the president-elect's bizarre outburst at Wednesday's press conference at which Trump attacked CNN's Jim Acosta, Hostin said, "We're going to see this happening again and again and again with journalists."
"We've seen it happen," said co-host Whoopie Goldberg.
"Watergate followed, so you'd better be careful," said Joy Behar.
"I think what journalists need to do when that happens again," Hostin said, "and Jim Acosta doesn't get his question, that very next reporter must ask Jim's question. And that way, Donald Trump knows that we are united as journalists. And journalists, we are now -- and I think we all know this -- on the front lines and we must be jealous guardians of our democracy. We must do that."
Co-host Sara Haines pointed out that the next media outlet Trump called on was Breitbart.com.
"So they're probably not going to do Jim Acosta's question," Haines said.
Watch the video, embedded below:
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined the chorus of conservatives criticizing CNN reporter Jim Acosta for aggressively questioning the President-elect.
But first, Gingrich explained Trumpism. "It's a whole new way of thinking about things, it's very different from Washington," said Gingrich, who served as US Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999.
Asked by the TMZ reporter about Trump's first press conference going awry with regards to the media, Gingrich countered, "What went wrong? A reporter was an idiot. Trump pointed out he was an idiot. Most people in the country thought he was an idiot. I thought from Trump's standpoint it was fine."
It's not clear how Gingrich figured out what "most people in the country" thought about the incident, since there's not polling to reflect national opinion on the relative intelligence of CNN reporter Jim Acosta. Gingrich then suggested that Acosta be banned for sixty days. Acosta "needs to be benched for a couple of weeks."
Watch below.
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