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xaviermcelderry

Biden Twitter account 'starts from zero' with no Trump followers - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...technology-55675826

Trump Biden Twitter

shared by xaviermcelderry on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Mr Biden's team was told about the move less than a month ago, and said it meant "the administration will have to start from zero".
  • Mr Obama was the first US leader to have an official Twitter account. The @POTUS account was set up during his tenure in 2015.At the end of his second term, a transition plan for handing over the official accounts to Mr Trump was drawn up - with @POTUS going to the new administration.
  • Twitter said that the official @POTUS account under Mr Trump will be archived in a similar way, under @POTUS45. But Mr Trump rarely used that account, favouring his own Twitter handle.Twitter notably omitted any mention of the now-suspended @realDonaldTrump account, and declined to answer questions about whether its contents would be archived.
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  • However, the US National Archives has already announced - through a tweet - that it will archive all social media content from that account, despite Twitter's lack of a commitment to doing so.
katherineharron

What it's been like fact-checking Joe Biden through 100 days - CNN Politics - 0 views

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biden

shared by katherineharron on 03 May 21 - No Cached
  • Things have been quieter around here in presidential-fact-check land. Not because President Joe Biden is accurate all the time. He certainly isn’t. But through his first 100 days in the Oval Office, Biden has given us intermittent false claims rather than the staggering avalanche of daily wrongness we faced from his predecessor.
  • In late March and early April, Biden weighed in on the hot-button issue of the new Georgia elections law. And he either deceived or didn’t have his facts straight – wrongly suggesting that the law requires polling places to close at 5 p.m. (You can read a detailed fact check here.) While the new law does reduce voter access in other ways, Biden gave the law’s supporters ammunition to argue that the law’s opponents were being dishonest.
  • Biden said about 28% fewer public words than Trump through April 29 of their respective terms.
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  • When Biden does make public remarks, he is much more likely to be reading from a prepared text than the famously freewheeling Trump was. Biden’s prepared texts have been quite factual.
  • Trump used the social media service to deliver off-the-cuff and oft-inaccurate boasts and attacks. Biden prefers to post conventionally presidential messages, a large number of which do not contain checkable claims of any kind.
  • Biden claimed that the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US are not Hispanic (experts put the actual figure at two-thirds or more Hispanic), that China has more retired people than working people (it has hundreds of millions more working people than retired people), that community health centers would be sent one million Covid-19 vaccine doses a week (the plan was to send one million in the “initial phase” of the program, not every week), and that the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage would be $20 per hour today if it had been linked to inflation upon its creation (Biden was not even close – the White House said Biden got mixed up with another statistic).
  • Biden claimed the US was sending back “the vast majority of families” who arrived at the southern border. While the US was indeed expelling the majority of all migrants encountered at the border, it was sending back less than half of the families in particular.
  • Biden has made 29 total false claims in his first 100 days, about one every three-and-a-half days on average. That’s not cause for celebration. But I counted 214 false claims from Trump over his own first 100 days in office, more than two per day on average – and that was a very slow Trump period compared to what came later.
  • Biden’s push for additional gun control measures, he exaggerated about gun manufacturers’ immunity from lawsuits
  • Biden has sometimes been inaccurate in his attempt to favorably compare himself to Trump.
  • And Biden has repeatedly claimed that Trump signed a tax law that gave 83% of the benefits to the top 1%. In reality, that 83% figure is a think tank’s estimate for what would happen in 2027 if the law’s corporate tax cuts remained in place but its individual tax cuts expired as scheduled after 2025. Between 2018 and 2025, conversely, the think tank estimated that the top 1% would get between 20.5% and 25.3% of the benefits.
  • Boasting of how well he knows Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden claimed three times in office that he has traveled 17,000 miles or more than 17,000 miles “with” Xi. As the Washington Post first noted, that number is nowhere close to accurate. Biden could have accurately made the same point by saying he has spent a lot of time with Xi.
  • In an impassioned flourish at the CNN town hall in February, Biden claimed the US spends almost $9 billion on a tax break “for people who own racehorses.” Experts have no idea where Biden got that figure for this tax break, and the White House declined to explain.
  • In my first fact check of Biden’s presidency, in January, I noted Biden was wrong when he told reporters that when he initially announced his goal of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, “you all said it’s not possible.” Biden switched to softer, accurate language in subsequent comments on the subject – saying in March, for example, that his goal was initially “considered ambitious” and that “some even suggested it was somewhat audacious.”
  • We aren’t throwing a party for the Biden team here; it would have been better if the administration hadn’t gotten it wrong in the first place. But after four years dealing with a Trump White House that appeared not to care about fact-checking at all, the Biden White House’s response was a welcome development.
leilamulveny

Twitter Bans President Trump's Personal Account Permanently - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...of-president-trump-11610148903

trump wsj Culture crisis

shared by leilamulveny on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • citing the risk of further incitement of violence and closing off one of his main communication tools following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his followers.
  • pressure on the platforms to do more to prevent additional violence.
  • Twitter had initially suspended Mr. Trump from posting on a temporary basis that Wednesday night, saying his tweets had violated its policies. The social-media company allowed him to resume posting on Thursday. Facebook Inc., FB -0.44% which temporarily suspended Mr. Trump’s account after the riot, said Thursday that it would extend that action indefinitely—and at least through the end of Mr. Trump’s term. Many critics of the president had called on Twitter to take more severe action as well.
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  • “Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,” the posts said. They added: “We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”
  • Twitter removed those new tweets from the @POTUS account soon after they were posted, saying the move was consistent with its policy against using other accounts to try to evade a suspension. “For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, we will not suspend those accounts permanently but will take action to limit their use,” a Twitter representative said.
  • Twitter and Facebook’s actions to shut off two of the largest megaphones Mr. Trump has relied on for years to communicate with the public highlights the difficult position social-media platforms face in regulating controversial content on their platforms.
  • Mr. Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and more than 35 million on Facebook.
  • “These two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.”
  • “In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app’s listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues,” a Google representative said.
  • Mr. Trump had tweeted three times since regaining account access Thursday. In his first post, he tweeted a video condemning the violence at the Capitol and acknowledging that a new administration would be inaugurated Jan. 20, without specifically naming Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
  • They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
  • Mr. Trump won more than 74 million votes, seven million less than Joe Biden received.
  • Google said it acted because of “continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.,” which violated its requirements for sufficient moderation of egregious content for apps it distributes.
  • Twitter earlier Friday shut off the accounts of Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who worked alongside Mr. Trump’s legal team. The company also said Friday that it suspended several accounts associated with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon for violating its policy on coordinated harmful activity.
  • “the world’s largest social media companies finally do the right thing and deplatform the inciter-in-chief before another person is killed or another cherished piece of our democracy is violated.”
fischerry

The Donald Trump-Kaiser Wilhelm Parallels Are Getting Scary - Foreign Policy - 0 views

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kaiserwilhelmii trump

shared by fischerry on 21 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Donald Trump-Kaiser Wilhelm Parallels Are Getting Scary
  • Historian Thomas Nipperdey once described Wilhelm as “superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success — as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday.”
  • But lately I’ve been struck by the parallels between POTUS 45 and the last Hohenzollern emperor: Kaiser Wilhelm II. I’m not the first person to notice the similarities
davisem

Trump will end health care cost-sharing subsidies - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by davisem on 13 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump plans to end a key set of Obamacare subsidies that helped lower-income enrollees pay for health care, the White House said Thursday, a dramatic move that raises questions about the law's future.
  • In a series of tweets Friday morning, Trump called on Democrats to reach out to him to "fix" the law, which he called a "broken mess."
  • Nearly 6 million enrollees, or 57%, qualify for the cost-sharing payments this year, according to the most recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services. The subsidies are expected to cost the federal government about $7 billion in 2017.
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  • White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the decision was "based on guidance from the Justice Department."
  • "It is a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in a joint statement. "Make no mistake about it, Trump will try to blame the Affordable Care Act, but this will fall on his back and he will pay the price for it."
  • This was the second major move on Obamacare Thursday. Earlier in the day, Trump signed an executive order charging his administration with developing policies to increase health care competition and choice in order to cut prices. However, it could also destabilize Obamacare by siphoning off younger and healthier Americans from the exchanges.
  • What will Congress do?
  • "Cutting health care subsidies will mean more uninsured in my district. @POTUS promised more access, affordable coverage.," Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who will be retiring at the end of this term, said in a Twitter post after the news broke Thursday night. "This does opposite."
  • "Under no circumstance should Congress attempt to expand Obamacare by cutting a check for President Obama's bailout of insurance companies," tweeted GOP Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina. "Instead, Congress must fulfill the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with high-quality, patient-centered health care."
  • Will costs go up?
  • Insurers have already signed contracts committing them to participating in 2018 and setting their rates. They must continuing offering the reduced deductibles and co-pays to eligible enrollees, but they won't be paid for them. That's why many asked for such large rate hikes.
  • Obamacare enrollees eligible to receive premium subsidies, which are not affected by Trump's move, will continue to get discounted rates.
malonema1

Trump claims historically secure border as he calls up troops - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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US crisis culture

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump took credit on Thursday for what he said was a decades-low drop in border crossings from Mexico at a time when his administration has touted the need to militarize the border due to a surge in migration.
  • Trump was referring to a Department of Homeland Security report issued in December that found border crossings were at a 46-year low for fiscal year 2017. But the data doesn't cover the last several months, in which numbers have climbed to be more in line with those for the final years of the Obama administration. Another DHS report issued in September that looked at long-term trends found that border crossings have been trending downward since before Trump took office
  • Following Trump's comments on Thursday, Nielsen tweeted that despite the "historic lows in illegal traffic last year, the numbers are spiking.""March numbers up 37% from Feb (largest one month change in at least 8 years) and TRIPLE over March 2017. We must secure our border. As @POTUS has said: All options are on the table," she continued.
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  • he caravan, an annual event organized by activists to highlight the journey that migrants undertake, has typically dispersed into separate, smaller groups at some point along the journey. Organizers of the event project that some 200 or so will proceed all the way to the border in coming days.
katherineharron

2017 'hit lists' show that team Trump has long eyed political opponents - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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shared by katherineharron on 11 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • ust months into his presidency, a small circle of senior White House advisers met with Donald Trump about a carefully curated list containing the names of dozens of perceived political opponents, particularly leakers, working inside the government.
  • Three of the officials told CNN that Bannon understood Trump wanted people fired, while the fourth said that McMaster believed the President's direction was to deal with leaks in a systematic fashion, rather than a mass firing.
  • The existence of "deep state" lists in the early days of Trump's presidency was widely talked about in the halls of the National Security Council and the State Department, according to multiple former White House officials, although several officials named on the list tell CNN they didn't know that any such list really existed or that they were on it. The "deep state" refers to a right-wing belief that certain members of the federal bureaucracy are actively undermining the Trump presidency.
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  • CNN has obtained three of the lists that Higgins says the group collated and discussed. One is titled "Holdovers" and is dated July 2017. Another is titled "Personnel Policy Decisions," with a subhead "Trump Administration NSC Appointments Not supporting Potus Vision and Expressed Intent." It has seven names on it, along with their titles and a category marked "Justification."
  • A third list, dated June 2017, has 39 names on it that included Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' current Middle East adviser Robert Malley, who left the administration when Trump took office, the former special envoy on ISIS Brett McGurk, and the person the White House believes to be the Ukraine whistleblower. When asked why Malley was on the list, Higgins told CNN, "We left him on by mistake."
mattrenz16

Biden Backs Labor Movement as Amazon Workers Weigh Unionization: Live Updates - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-relief-bill-stimulus

shared by mattrenz16 on 01 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden expressed solidarity with workers attempting to unionize an Amazon facility in Alabama in a video released Sunday that emphasized his broad support of the labor movement — without explicitly backing their cause or naming the company itself.
  • Around 6,000 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, a former steel town outside of Birmingham, are voting over the next week on whether they want to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
  • If successful, they would be the first of Amazon’s 400,000 American workers to join a union — a landmark undertaking and early test of Mr. Biden’s campaign claim that he will be the “most pro-union president” ever.
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  • “Let me be really clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union,” he said. “But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that either.”
  • More than 2,000 of the warehouse’s workers signed cards indicating interest in joining the union, meeting the threshold to hold a vote under National Labor Relations Board rules.
  • The site of the unionization drive is not insignificant. Alabama was a key battleground for the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, and many of the workers at the Bessemer facility are Black, a fact that Mr. Biden noted on Sunday. But Alabama is now a right-to-work state, making it harder for unions to organize or negotiate with employers — which has made it a draw for big companies, especially auto manufacturers.
  • The unionization drive takes place at a time of “reckoning on race,” Mr. Biden said, adding, “It reveals the deep disparities that still exist in our country.”
leilamulveny

Oath Keepers Founder Is Said to Be Investigated in Capitol Riot - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...oath-keepers-capitol-riot.html

new york times Politics US Culture policy

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors are investigating Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, for any role he might have played in the storming of the Capitol two months ago, according to court documents and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
  • If he were ultimately charged, it could amount to a crippling blow to the militia.
  • In court papers filed on Monday night, prosecutors significantly raised the stakes against Mr. Rhodes, saying that they now have evidence that he was in direct communication with some of the plot suspects before, during and after the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors said they have recovered messages — batched together under the title “DC OP: Jan 6 21” — from the encrypted chatting app Signal connecting Mr. Rhodes to regional Oath Keepers leaders from around the country, including two who have been charged in the conspiracy case: Jessica M. Watkins of Ohio and Kelly Meggs of Florida.
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  • Prosecutors overseeing the investigation of Mr. Rhodes, who attended Yale Law School after his military service, have nonetheless struggled to make a case against him. The official with knowledge of the matter said his activities have so far have seemed to stay within the boundaries of the First Amendment.
  • Known for his distinctive black eye patch — the result of a gun accident — Mr. Rhodes has long been known to the F.B.I. and remains under investigation for a matter separate from the riot at the Capitol, a Justice Department official said. For years, he has earned a reputation as a leader of the right-wing “Patriot” movement, often spewing incendiary rhetoric to recruit and inspire militia members.
  • At a ceremony in Lexington, Mass., the site of a famous battle of the Revolutionary War, Mr. Rhodes said his plan was for members of the Oath Keepers to disobey certain illegal orders from the government and instead uphold their oath to the Constitution.
  • Mr. Rhodes was particularly vocal in supporting the former president’s relentless lies that the 2020 elections were marred by fraud and that President Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
  • Some of the Oath Keepers charged in connection with the Capitol attack have evinced a similar devotion to Mr. Trump. According to court papers, Ms. Watkins said she was “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the vote only after the election took place.“POTUS has the right to activate units,” she wrote in a text message to an associate on Nov. 9, according to court documents. “If Trump asks me to come, I will.”
katherineharron

Pence and Trump finally speak after post-riot estrangement - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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pence

shared by katherineharron on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Vice President Mike Pence received a memento from his aides the other day: the engraved chair set aside for him in the White House Cabinet Room, hauled over-the-shoulder from the West Wing and delivered to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for one of his final staff meetings.
  • Instead of applause, many of Trump's aides -- even those who have stuck with him through myriad scandals and embarrassments -- were voicing shame and disappointment. His circle has shrunk. Many have resigned and others are still considering it.
  • On Monday, after an extended period of silence, Trump and Pence spoke for the first time after a deadly riot of Trump supporters broke out at the US Capitol with Pence inside, according to two administration officials.
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  • "They reiterated that those who broke the law and stormed the Capitol last week do not represent the America First movement backed by 75 million Americans, and pledged to continue the work on behalf of the country for the remainder of their term," the senior official said.
  • Trump had spent the weekend largely in isolation, as aides either distanced themselves from him or limited their time in his presence. Trump canceled a planned trip to Camp David, where his closest aides were hoping he would get into a good mindset ahead of his final stretch in office.
  • The mob event, and Trump's fury at Pence in the lead-up to it, left their relationship in tatters. Before their Oval Office meeting Monday, the pair had not spoken since before Trump's rally on the Ellipse last week. Their last conversation was punctuated by a vulgarity the President uttered after Pence informed him, for a final time, that he could not unilaterally reject the results of the election, something he had already told Trump in previous meetings that often dragged on for hours.
  • Pence finally got "a glimpse of POTUS' vindictiveness," one source familiar with the situation said, using the acronym for President of the United States.
  • And while Pence now appears unlikely to entertain invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, he has not weighed in on it publicly, allowing the idea to persist, which people close to him described as intentional.
  • Pence, who is often internally mocked for how deferential he is toward Trump, has taken a quiet but defiant stance in their final days in office.
  • The attempted insurrection that Trump incited at the US Capitol last week prompted the permanent suspension of his Twitter account, a looming second impeachment and a wave of administration resignations
  • It was the first time in their more than four years as political partners that Trump's vengeance had been trained on a man known mostly for his fealty. Even as others once close to Trump -- from his personal attorney Michael Cohen to his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to any manner of former aides -- met similar fates, Pence was spared.
  • The final conversation left Trump irate, and his anger emerged during the rally itself, when he told the crowd he hoped "Mike has the courage to do what he has to do" and ignores "the stupid people that he's listening to."
  • Pence also recently learned that pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell was involved in the lawsuit filed by Trump's Republican allies against him. Trump was not only aware, but had encouraged the effort, people close to the situation said.
  • Even when the President returned to the White House while his crowd set off for the Capitol, Trump's anger at Pence did not abate. And as the crowd broke down doors, mobbed the building, and in some cases appeared to be hunting Pence himself, Trump remained focused on the perceived disloyalty.
  • After Wednesday's events, Pence allies were aghast the President did not call to ensure the vice president's safety, or the safety of his wife and daughter, who had accompanied him as he performed the ceremonial role of overseeing the Electoral College tally.
  • "Was he concerned at all that an angry mob that he commanded to march on the Capitol might injure the vice president or his family?" a person familiar with the matter asked.
  • Pence's actions earned him praise within the administration, including from national security adviser Robert O'Brien, who tweeted on Wednesday that Pence "is a genuinely fine and decent man. He exhibited courage today."
  • Democrats, however, remain frustrated at Pence's unwillingness to move on the 25th Amendment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
  • Other Democrats are skeptical that after four years of standing by Trump -- including through his attempts to cast doubt on the election results using false claims of voter fraud -- Pence can recover his moral standing now.
  • A day later, an attempt by House Democrats to bring up a resolution urging Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power was blocked by Republicans. If that resolution ends up failing, Democrats plan to to vote Wednesday to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riot.
  • Advisers have said Pence hopes to provide a bridge to the next administration and do as much as possible to assist Biden's team in preparing for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Pence and Biden consulted regularly in the early days of the Trump administration, including on foreign policy matters.
  • On Monday, Pence's schedule listed a coronavirus task force meeting -- one of the final times the group meets before the end of the administration. Pence did not bring up the siege at the Capitol during the discussion, a person close to the task force said.
katherineharron

FBI warns 'armed protests' being planned at all 50 state capitols and Washington DC - C... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The FBI has received information indicating "armed protests" are being planned at all 50 state capitols and the US Capitol in Washington, DC in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, according to an internal bulletin obtained by CNN.
  • According to a senior administration official, the interagency rehearsal aimed to ensure a seamless chain of command in the event of a national emergency in the days leading up to the inauguration and on that day itself.
  • the bulletin highlights concerns that the US Capitol siege was perhaps just the beginning of potentially violent actions from supporters of President Donald Trump
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  • "Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January," the FBI bulletin states. It also suggests there are threats of an "uprising" if Trump is removed via the 25th Amendment before Inauguration Day.
  • "On 8 January, the FBI received information on an identified group calling for others to join them in 'storming' state, local and federal government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event POTUS is removed as President prior to Inauguration Day. This identified group is also planning to 'storm' government offices including in the District of Columbia and in every state, regardless of whether the states certified electoral votes for Biden or Trump, on 20 January," the bulletin adds.
  • The FBI is also tracking reports of "various threats to harm President-Elect Biden ahead of the presidential inauguration,"
  • The FBI said in a separate statement that its "efforts are focused on identifying, investigating, and disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity," and that its "focus is not on peaceful protesters, but on those threatening their safety and the safety of other citizens with violence and destruction of property."
  • The news comes as security measures are being stepped up ahead of Inauguration Day, with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies preparing for the possibility of more violence after rioters stormed the US Capitol last week
  • Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday urged Americans to avoid the city during Biden's inauguration next week and to participate virtually following last week's deadly domestic terror attack on the US Capitol.
  • "Trumpism won't die on January 20," said Bowser, who has asked Trump and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to declare a pre-disaster declaration for DC. The White House said in a statement Monday night that Trump approved the emergency declaration requested by Bowser.
  • "In light of events of the past week and the evolving security landscape leading up to the inauguration and at the recommendation of Secret Service Director James Murray, I have instructed the U.S. Secret Service to begin the National Special Security Event operations for the 2021 Inauguration effective Wednesday, January 13th instead of January 19th," Wolf said in a statement.
  • "Now that it happened people will take it much more seriously," the official said, referring to last week's violence. "Now, the planners, they are all going to take it much more seriously."
  • Law enforcement agencies in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey that deployed to the US Capitol Wednesday to assist propel pro-Trump rioters expect to send officers to Washington, DC, for the inauguration.
  • The National Guard has plans to have up to 15,000 National Guard troops to meet current and future requests for the inauguration, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Monday. The dramatic increase in troops comes as law enforcement in the nation's capital and around the country brace for further extremist violence amid the transition of power.
  • "Our security planning is fluid and adjustments are made as needed, from day-to-day," Banner said. "Security enhancements that can be put in place include both seen and unseen measures. In general, we don't discuss security measures, but I can confirm that out of an abundance of caution, we are increasing our visible presence at the Capitol for the next couple of weeks starting today."
katherineharron

Law enforcement braces for more extremist violence in DC and around the US ahead of Ina... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

riots

shared by katherineharron on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Calls for new protests in Washington, DC, and states across the country have law enforcement bracing for more possible violence in the coming days after rioters stormed the US Capitol last week leaving five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer.
  • A Department of Homeland Security official told CNN that the breach of the Capitol will sharpen the response and planning for inauguration.
  • DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked for additional security measures with ten days to go before Inauguration Day as Wednesday's riot has set off a shockwave of concern among federal, state and local officials for more possible bloodshed over the outcome of the 2020 election that ousted President Donald Trump from office.
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  • the Department of Defense is aware of "further possible threats posed by would-be terrorists in the days up to and including Inauguration Day."
  • Layers of security, standoff distancing and tactical teams on standby will be used to minimize violence near the inaugural events, he said, adding that the biggest concerns should be an active shooter scenario, vehicle ramming and the deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure.
  • More than 6,000 members have already been mobilized in the wake of the Capitol being stormed by pro-Trump rioters to work in 12-hour shifts on Capitol grounds and work traffic control points throughout the city.
  • Plans for future armed protests, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, began proliferating on and off Twitter last week, the social media company said.
  • "Trump WILL be sworn in for a second term on January 20th!!," said a commenter on thedonald.win, a pro-Trump online forum, on Thursday, the day after the siege. "We must not let the communists win. Even if we have to burn DC to the ground."
  • "Law enforcement was ill prepared for an event the entire country knew was coming, and one that POTUS had been signaling for weeks," said Brian Harrell, former DHS assistant secretary for infrastructure protection. "The normal 'layers of security', with each inner layer being tougher to breach, was nearly non-existent. It's shocking, that in a post 9/11 world, we witnessed the 'people's house' be breached and ransacked with ease."
  • "I will tell you that given the events of this last week that this inauguration preparation has to be different than any other inauguration," Bowser said in an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
  • Washington State Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee announced Friday that he was mobilizing up to 750 members of the National Guard to provide security for the beginning of the state's legislative session, which starts Monday.
  • The inauguration is designated as a National Special Security Event, which allows for greater federal security cooperation and law enforcement resources.
  • "You're going to see immediate improvement, fully aggressive posture by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice as well, because we accept violence from no one," he said in an interview on Fox News Thursday.
  • Experts warn that the calls for violence, which circulated ahead of Wednesday's siege of the Capitol, have intensified ahead of Inauguration Day.
  • "We fully expect that this violence could actually get worse before it gets better."
  • "It's to show that a relatively small number of people can actually take over the system. It's supposed to be a rallying cry for -- 'join us, or you are now the enemy.'"
  • "We could start to see a lot of lives lost because of the moment that occurred on Wednesday, so very, very concerned about the cascading effects," the former official said. "It's a very concerning moment."
  • On Saturday afternoon, an unlawful assembly was declared in San Diego after protesters clashed and threw objects at police officers. According to tweets from the San Diego Police Department, protesters threw rocks, bottles and eggs at officers shortly after they were asked to leave the area. The tweets also said that pepper spray was being dispersed from the crowd toward the officers.
  • On the same day as the siege in Washington, DC, the Texas State Capitol building and grounds were closed to the public "out of an abundance of caution,"
  • At the Pentagon, officials are assessing whether there is a need to bolster the number of National Guard forces to as many as 13,000 guardsmen for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, according to a defense official with knowledge of the planning. Prior to the US Capitol breach, the estimated need called for approximately 7,000 guard troops.
  • "In light of the most recent insurrection activity, the state cannot tolerate any actions that could result in harm, mayhem or interruption of function of democratic institutions," Inslee said Friday evening. In addition to Guardsmen, the governor says a "large number of Washington State Patrol troopers will be on hand."
  • "Some of the online rhetoric has called for protests at all 50 capitols plus DC," the official said. "FBI in particular has been continuing to put our threat assessments and we are at the state level as well."
lmunch

Trump Administration Approves Start of Formal Transition to Biden - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-transition-biden.html

Trump Biden POTUS transition

shared by lmunch on 24 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Trump’s government on Monday authorized President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to begin a formal transition process after Michigan certified Mr. Biden as its winner, a strong sign that the president’s last-ditch bid to overturn the results of the election was coming to an end.
  • But the president said on Twitter on Monday night that he accepted the decision by Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to allow a transition to proceed.
  • But in conversations in recent days that intensified Monday morning, top aides — including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel; and Jay Sekulow, the president’s personal lawyer — told the president the transition needed to begin.
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  • Hours later, he tried to play down the significance of Ms. Murphy’s action, tweeting that it was simply “preliminarily work with the Dems” that would not stop efforts to change the election results.
  • Mr. Trump continued to solicit opinions from associates, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, who told him there were still legal avenues to pursue, the people said.
  • In a letter to Mr. Biden, which was first reported by CNN, Ms. Murphy rebutted Mr. Trump’s assertion that he had directed her to make the decision, saying that “I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts.”
  • On Capitol Hill, most of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies had stood by his side for the past two weeks as he tried to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. But on Monday, some of the Senate’s most senior Republicans sharply urged Ms. Murphy to allow the transition to proceed.
  • Earlier in the day, Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, both Republicans, issued statements breaking from Mr. Trump and calling for Mr. Biden to begin receiving coronavirus and national security briefings.“At some point, the 2020 election must end,” Ms. Capito said.
  • The pressure on Mr. Trump extended beyond the political sphere. More than 100 business leaders sent a letter to the administration on Monday asking it to facilitate a transition, and a group of Republican national security experts implored Republican members of Congress to demand that Mr. Trump concede.
  • By late Monday, Mr. Biden’s team had already taken its first steps toward a more formal transition, moving its website, buildbackbetter.com, to its new home on government servers made possible by Ms. Murphy’s decision: Buildbackbetter.gov.
Javier E

Trump Lost to Himself - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...mp-lost-to-himself-11613691782

trump election 2020 presidency wsj politics history

shared by Javier E on 20 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Joe Biden still beat him by more than seven million votes.
  • As important is why he lost, and for that look no further than Mr. Trump’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio.
  • One stunning conclusion: Mr. Trump lost even though the electorate was more Republican in 2020 than in 2016
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  • Mr. Trump lost “largely due to a massive swing” among independents and erosion among Republicans. This helps explain how the GOP gained a dozen seats in the House even as Mr. Trump became the first President to lose re-election since George H.W. Bush.
  • Much of this erosion in support was based on dislike for Mr. Trump personally and the way he handled the Presidency. “While a majority of voters said they didn’t find either Presidential candidate honest or trustworthy, Biden held a double-digit advantage over POTUS,”
  • Mr. Trump was favored 6 to 1 or more among voters on the economy. But the coronavirus was the top voter issue in both groups of states, and Mr. Biden carried those voters 3 to 1. Mr. Trump’s eroded credibility and inability to maintain a consistent Covid message may have been decisive.
  • Mr. Trump “suffered his greatest erosion with white voters, particularly white men in both state groups,” according to the Fabrizio analysis. This offset his double digit gains with Hispanics while he performed about as well with blacks as he did in 2016
  • The former President also lost ground with nearly every age group in both sets of states, and he “suffered with white college educated voters across the board.”
  • Mr. Biden’s consistent campaign message of a return to a calmer, more unifying politics resonated with millions of voters who had tired of the constant Trump turmoil. Mr. Trump didn’t lose to Joe Biden. He lost to himself.
Javier E

Larry Summers was Biden's biggest inflation critic. Was he wrong? - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rs-biden-inflation-projections

inflation debate biden critic

shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • As inflation has plummeted while unemployment remains low, the president’s allies see not just a strong run of economic data but a new model for policymakers — proof of what is possible if the government is willing to be aggressive in fighting downturns.
  • Summers is the most prominent expert who disagrees. He blasted the administration’s $1.9 trillion 2021 stimulus law, the American Rescue Plan, for exacerbating inflation, arguing through 2022 that the U.S. economy would probably need a spike in unemployment for price hikes to fully abate and accusing President Biden’s team of the “least responsible” macroeconomic policy in 40 years. Biden’s economic policies had overstimulated the economy, Summers said on cable TV, in op-eds and in interviews, as well as in private talks. And he maintained it would almost certainly take a major slowdown — and millions of lost jobs — for inflation to return to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
  • Biden last year instinctively rejected the notion pushed by Summers that taming inflation would require policies that would throw millions of people out of work, according to five people familiar with the president’s private remarks
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  • The president’s allies are newly optimistic the brightening economic mood will further discredit the notion that a recession is necessary to tame inflation.
  • Despite the disagreement, senior White House aides still talk to Summers frequently and routinely seek his input. Summers has been to the White House several times this year alone, even as he continues to publicly hammer Biden’s industrial policy, student loan forgiveness and other economic programs.
  • Along with other centrist economists, Summers says inflation remains dangerously high, warning it could reaccelerate. The latest inflation report shows prices rising by 3.2 percent in July relative to one year ago, but a less volatile measure of price increases is still at 4.7 percent. The labor market remains strong not because Biden has defied the laws of economic reality, according to Summers, but because the battle against inflation is still far from won. Summers maintains the rescue plan sparked inflation that is at risk of becoming “entrenched” — a long-term problem for consumers and businesses.
  • “I don’t think anybody should reach any definitive judgments until we see how things play out,” Summers said in an interview. Summers said his predictions were based on standard macroeconomic models, and not meant to be interpreted as precise estimates. “The idea that bringing down inflation has nothing to do with increasing unemployment runs different from all conventional macroeconomic assessments.”
  • “The Democratic Party is currently split between people who thought the American Rescue Plan was appropriately sized and absolutely necessary — and those who think it was too big and had collateral effects that were quite damaging,” said Bill Galston, a policy analyst at the D.C.-based Brookings Institution who served in the Clinton administration. “This is a moral question, but it’s also a political question. If Joe Biden loses the election principally because of economic discontent over inflation and high prices, then a lot of Democrats will conclude it was not worth it.”
  • Summers has also made predictions that still do not appear to have been borne out, at least not yet. In a June 2022 speech at the London School of Economics, when inflation was at its 9.1 percent peak, Summers said the nation would “need” substantially higher levels of unemployment for inflation to come down.
  • “We need five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation — in other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment,
  • That same month, Summers and a co-author wrote that reducing job vacancies by 20 percent “requires, on average” a three percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The number of job openings has fallen about 16 percent with no discernible jump in unemployment
  • In September 2022, Summers reiterated the point to Fortune: “I’m not sure you’re restraining inflation until you get the unemployment rate close to 5 percent, and to significantly restrain inflation you’re likely to need unemployment for some period at 6 percent.” The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent then and is the same level now.
  • In more recent interviews, Summers has defended his estimates by pointing out that inflation remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target. In particular, Summers emphasizes that it was always the case that transitory factors — such as soaring gas prices — pushed inflation up higher, to closer to 8 percent, but that the more stable “underlying” inflation was closer to 4.5 percent.
  • Even with lower overall inflation, Summers argues, underlying inflation remains largely unchanged — though the decline in transitory prices makes the problem appear to be going away.
  • “I think it’s fair to say — given how hot the economy is — the inflation performance at this point is better than I think many standard models would have predicted,” Summers said. “But I don’t think that all establishes we’re on a confident glide path to 2 percent with current rates of unemployment.”
  • More liberal economists argued that Summers misdiagnosed the cause of higher inflation, and therefore missed the cure. These economists contend that price spikes were overwhelmingly caused by supply chain disruptions, including lingering shocks from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not by too much government stimulus. As supply chains have normalized, so too has inflation.
  • Skanda Amarnath, executive director of the left-leaning think tank Employ America, emphasized that inflation is “now broadly decelerating,” not just in some idiosyncratic or transitory factors such as energy and used cars but across a large range of categories — household furnishings, technological equipment, wages, legal and professional services, and more.
  • “Remember when the experts said that to get inflation under control we needed to lower wages, and drive up unemployment? I never bought that,” Biden tweeted on July 20. “Instead, I focused on getting more Americans into the workforce, fixing our broken supply chains, and lowering costs.
  • Summers remains unconvinced about the rescue plan, pointing to substantial “unhappiness in the middle class about the state of the economy” over the last two years, mostly driven by inflation.
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