Month: March 2019

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the Trump administration Monday in a case challenging its use of waivers to bypass environmental regulations in constructing parts of the border wall.

The state of California and several environmental groups sued President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in September 2017 to stop construction of a border wall prototype and ongoing repairs to 14 miles of an existing barrier in San Diego.

“Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), the Secretary of the DHS has long had the authority ‘to install additional physical barriers and roads … in the vicinity of the United States border,’” the Ninth Circuit’s opinion states, quoting the IIRIRA.

The IIRIRA grants the secretary of the DHS “the authority to waive all legal requirements” as is “‘necessary to ensure expeditious construction’ of those barriers and roads,” according to the Ninth Circuit.

The Ninth Circuit’s three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the federal government. The dissenting judge, Consuelo Callahan, wrote that she supported the Trump administration’s argument, but thought the court lacked jurisdiction to review California’s appeal.

In 2017, the DHS waved provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act, expediting approval to begin construction of the border wall prototype and repairs.

The ruling is Trump’s second legal victory in the case after U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel ruled against California in February 2018. Curiel found that “Congress delegated to its executive counterpart, the responsibility to construct border barriers as needed in areas of high illegal entry to detect and deter illegal entries.”

Trump accused Curiel of being biased against him in an earlier case involving Trump University. Curiel ruled against then-presidential candidate Trump on several points throughout the 2016.

“I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border,” Trump told Fox News in February 2016. “Now, he is Hispanic, I believe. He is a very hostile judge to me.”

Trump eventually settled the case for $25 million.

French students are flipping over cars, looting shops and setting buildings on fire after joining protests and riots across the country over a proposed carbon tax, according to ABC News.

French President Emmanuel Macron temporarily suspended the carbon tax proposal Tuesday. The “yellow vest” protesters, named after the neon yellow vests they wear, called off talks with Macron’s administration Monday citing “security concerns” after being threatened by some within their own ranks.

The yellow vest protest is the longest lasting demonstration in the country since 1968. The riots began over carbon taxes that would have risen the price of gas and diesel and grew to encompass much of Macron’s agenda. Some protesters have called for the president’s resignation.

“No tax warrants putting the unity of the nation in danger,” Prime Minister Édouard Philippe told reporters Tuesday. “One would have to be deaf and blind not to see or hear the anger.”

The French populist rebellion against carbon taxes comes as the United Nations holds the Conference of the Parties conference over climate change in Poland this week. The U.N. has endorsed carbon taxes twice as high as those proposed by Macron in order to combat climate change.

Why is America the world’s richest nation? Is it mostly because of the government, or is it thanks to entrepreneurs and businessmen? Historian Burt Folsom of Hillsdale College explains.

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Harry Styles covers Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.

• Trump has asked for $5.7 billion to fund construction of a wall on the country’s southern border. 
• The White House is also asking for a few billion dollars more to bolster immigration enforcement and humanitarian care for illegals already in custody. 
• Democrats and Republicans could possibly make a DACA-wall deal, or Trump could circumvent congressional authority altogether by declaring an emergency. 

President Donald Trump is demanding Congress pass a budget that includes funding for a massive wall on the country’s southern border, but the administration’s border security wish list also includes a number of other requests.

The partial government shutdown reached day 20 on Thursday, with no compromise appearing on the horizon. The gridlock would only need to continue for two more days to surpass the longest government shutdown in U.S. history — which took place between December 1995 and January 1996 and lasted 21 days. Congressional Democrats continue to oppose the concept of a border wall, framing it as unnecessary and immoral. However, Trump has pledged to reject any budget that doesn’t fund his proposal.

How much for the wall and what would it look like?

The president has specifically called for $5.7 billion in appropriated funds to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Stretching 234 miles, the proposed wall would be a steel barrier, but its design would likely vary depending on the terrain. The amount of funding dedicated to the wall is subject to change should Republicans and Democrats reach any sort of compromise.

It’s not clear if some of the funds would be allocated towards the rebuilding of wall that already exist on the U.S.-Mexico border. The president’s negotiating team — spearheaded by Vice President Mike Pence, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — have presented Democrats with a basic outline of what they want.

What else is Trump calling for?

While the wall has taken center stage of the immigration debate, it is only one component of Trump’s border security reform agenda.

Among the White House’s other demands: $675 million for increased inspection technology at southern ports of entry; $571 million for an additional 2,000 Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents; $563 million to fund an additional 75 immigration judges and staff to handle the hundreds of thousands of cases currently backlogged in immigration courts; and $211 million to bring on 750 more Border Patrol agents.

The administration also wants to beef up funding to care for the illegals that have been apprehended by the U.S. government. Such requests include $4.2 billion to go towards 52,000 detention beds for illegal aliens and $800 million towards the medical, transportation and housing costs of those in custody.

What the border looks like right now

The border between the U.S. and Mexico is 1,954 miles long. A mere 650 miles is protected with some sort of fencing, leaving around 1,350 miles wide open. The porousness of the southern border is even more severe when taking into consideration that, of the 650 miles of established fencing, half is designed to stop only vehicles — not people.

If a wall is built, much of the construction would take place on the eastern half of the border. Texas stands out among the other border states for lacking much of any established fence. The biggest continual border wall gap currently stretches over 600 miles in Texas, mostly because the area lacks any major cities on either side of the border line.

On the other hand, large portions of the California, Arizona and New Mexico borders have some form of a wall already established. However, only a fraction these fences are actually meant to keep pedestrians out.

What’s going to happen next? 

No compromise appears to be in sight. Trump abruptly walked out of a meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his request to fund border wall construction within 30 days.

Some have suggested a DACA-wall compromise. Such a deal would include Democrats agreeing to fund a border wall in exchange for Republicans signing on to protect “dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country illegally at a very young.

If no deal is reached, Trump could possibly act unilaterally. The president has increasingly entertained the idea of declaring a national emergency at the border, an action that would allow him to build the wall without approval from Congress.

“We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly. It’s another way of doing it,” Trump told reporters on Friday. 

A group representing electric utility companies is warning a federal court that a decision regarding coal ash dumps could lead to coal-fired power plants across the U.S. going offline and impacting grid reliability.

The case regards a deadline for when power producers can close some of their coal ash dumps. The Trump administration last year gave utilities a deadline extension for when they must close or upgrade their unlined storage ponds, but environmentalist groups, led by the Waterkeeper Alliance, are suing to rescind the extension.

Nixing the 2018 extensions “would cause regulatory uncertainty and significant disruption to the nation’s power supply and thus is wholly irresponsible and unnecessary,” lawyers for the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, which represents a number of power companies, wrote in a filing on Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The lobby group is warning that the country’s coal fleet could be forced to shut down if the deadline extension is removed.

Coal ash — the residue that’s left over when power plants burn coal to produce electricity — can contain a number of toxic chemicals such as lead, mercury, arsenic and selenium. Because of their toxicity, coal plants typically contain them in specific dump sites, otherwise known as coal ash dumps.

Because it is one of the country biggest waste streams, coal ash is heavily regulated by the government. However, the Trump administration is reforming the way the EPA manages coal ash, amending Obama-era regulations that were established back in 2015.

Originally, power plants had only six months to close or retrofit their unlined storage ponds if they violated groundwater protection standards. The Trump administration extended this deadline to late 2020. Environmental groups — which accused the EPA of only caring about utility companies’ pocket books — called the extension “unlawful” and have petitioned the D.C. Circuit to either stay implementation or completely vacate it.

Energy companies responded by saying the environmentalists “would prefer regulatory chaos over an orderly and responsible transition to a new regulatory regime,” and noted that power plants use the ponds to remove coal ash and other liquid waste streams.

While in decline, coal-fired generation still make up a major stake in the U.S. power market. Coal plants provided just under 30 percent of the country’s electricity in 2017. If the U.S. coal fleet halts operations at the scale of which the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group is warning, the country’s electric grid could be put at risk of blackouts.

The news world is all abuzz with the possibility that “Palestinian” leader Yasser Arafat was murdered.

The big story was broken by the most “trustworthy” of sources… al-Jazeera, a news network sometimes known for its terrorist ties.

Al-Jazeera’s investigation into Arafat’s death has revealed that his clothing has traces of the radioactive material polonium-210, suggesting that radioactive poisoning led to his death. Now the questions are flying… how could this happen? Who could be responsible for his death?

I have my own questions.

1. Why did al-Jazeera decide now, eight years after Arafat’s death, to test his clothing?

2. If Arafat was truly murdered – who really cares? Aren’t terrorists supposed to be targeted and killed?

Yasser Arafat created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. Three years before the Israeli “occupation” of Judea/Samaria (West Bank) and the Gaza Strip. If the PLO was formed three years in advance of the occupation – where was this ‘Palestine’ that he was hoping to liberate?

That would obviously be the State of Israel – Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem (the western half), Be’er Sheba included. The map of Israel is included in the PLO emblem, not just the “occupied” parts, answering our question. Of course, Jordan, the eastern half of Palestine under the British Mandate was ignored. Only the Jewish presence in the Land needed to be murdered and expelled.

Yasser Arafat was a murderer of Americans as well as Israelis. Unarmed men, women and children were targets of this “liberation” movement. School buses were deemed legitimate targets. Olympics athletes as well.

In later years, Arafat supposedly became a man of “peace” – but one who spoke of war in Arabic to his brothers, and of peace to the Western media.

Yasser Arafat was a murderer, plain and simple, of hundreds of innocents. Whether or not he was targeted doesn’t much matter. The only question that matters now is why he wasn’t killed sooner.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett made multiple false claims Friday about the Steele dossier, including the long-debunked assertion that the salacious anti-Trump report was first funded by Republicans.

During her show, Burnett also falsely claimed that a newly released report produced on behalf of BuzzFeed News supported allegations that dossier author Christopher Steele made about Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive. She also asserted, without citing evidence, that many of the claims made in the dossier have been verified.

“New tonight, President Trump slamming the Steele dossier on Twitter calling it the, quote, ‘fake dossier paid for by crooked Hillary,’” Burnett began, referring to a Trump tweet earlier on Friday.

“Let’s just make sure we share the facts with you,” said Burnett. “It was paid for, right, by a conservative website funded by a Republican donor. That was the firm that paid for the dossier to get it started. As far as it being fake, we have a lot we don’t know. We do know several allegations in the dossier are true and tonight we’re learning more.”

In reality, Steele was working for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was hired by the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Donald Trump. Prior to being hired by Democrats, Fusion GPS worked for The Washington Free Beacon, a website funded by Republican billionaire Paul Singer. That contract ended when Trump won the Republican primaries. (Related: Connections: Fusion GPS and the Trump Dossier)

And contrary to what Burnett claimed on her show, none of the dossier’s key allegations about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia have been verified in the two-plus years since its publication. And one of its most serious claims — that Michael Cohen visited Prague to pay off hackers — was disputed by the former Trump attorney during a sworn congressional hearing last month.

Burnett joins a long list of journalists who have made the false claim about the dossier’s funding. Former FBI Director James Comey has also falsely claimed that Republicans first funded Steele’s report.

During her show, Burnett touted a report produced by Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent who was hired by BuzzFeed as part of its legal battle with Gubarev.

Steele claimed in one of his dossier’s memos that Gubarev was recruited under “duress” by Russian spies and played a “significant” role in hacking Democrats’ computer systems. Gubarev sued Steele and BuzzFeed, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017, for defamation.

On Thursday, Ferrante’s final investigative report and deposition were unsealed along with a slew of other documents from the lawsuit.

Ferrante, who was paid $4.1 million by BuzzFeed, found no evidence supporting the key claim about Gubarev. Instead, he determined only that Gubarev’s companies “have provided gateways to the internet for cybercriminals and Russian state-sponsored actors to launch and control large scale malware campaigns over the past decade.”

Ferrante, who joined CNN as a contributor in January, also dinged Gubarev for failing to “actively prevent cybercriminals from using their infrastructure.”

Gubarev’s lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer, dismissed the BuzzFeed-funded report in a statement on Thursday.

“Buzzfeed spent $4.1 million on a team of former FBI agents to try to prove that Gubarev and his companies did what was alleged in the Steele Dossier and came up empty-handed,” he said.

“The Dossier didn’t say: ‘hey, someone might have misused XBT’s networks as part of the hack of the DNC,’” said Fray-Witzer.

“The Dossier directly and unequivocally accused Alex Gubarev of having been corrupted by the FSB and having personally hacked (or directed others to hack) the DNC.  And that defamatory statement was, and is, a lie, plain and simple.”

Fray-Witzer also noted that Gubarev has not been approached by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Gubarev and his companies have also not been mentioned in Mueller’s indictments of Russian nationals accused of hacking Democrats’ email systems.

While Burnett was quick to claim that parts of the dossier have been verified, CNN has generally avoided discussing a recent development that undercut one of the Steele report’s most startling claims: that former Trump fixer Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign to pay off hackers.

That allegation suffered a fatal blow on Feb. 27, when Cohen denied during a congressional hearing that he has ever visited Prague or the Czech Republic.

CNN’s own Jake Tapper has also undercut the Cohen allegation. On Jan. 11, 2017, the day after BuzzFeed published the dossier, Tapper claimed on air that a U.S. government official told him that a different Michael Cohen had visited Prague. Tapper and CNN have since not revisited that statement.

Cohen’s Prague denial was mentioned on Burnett’s show Friday, but it came at the tail end of the segment fluffing the dossier’s claims about Gubarev.

Little Olly the Jack Russell Terrier goes off script in the Rescue Dog Agility at Crufts 2017!

More than one third (36 percent) of Millennials (ages 18-34) have aimed to deceive their followers by posting social media vacation images that make trips look better than they are, according to the 10^th annual 2018 Vacation Confidence Index*, released by Allianz Global Assistance. The study found that 15 percent of Gen X’ers (ages 35 – 54) and five percent of Baby Boomers (ages 55+) have done the same.

Of those who confessed to this social media deception, 65 percent do so in an attempt to make others envious, while 51 percent use it as an opportunity to compete with others who do the same. Of all respondents, guilty of social media deception or not, men are slightly more likely than women to post vacation photos on social media to make friends/family jealous (men: 28 percent and women: 16 percent) and compete with others (men: 22 percent and women: eight percent).

Millennials may be known for their attachment to technology while sleeping, working and traveling, but the new report sheds light on how and why they use social media to document and inspire their wanderlust. Millennials are more likely than any other age group to document their travel on social media, but the reasons for doing so vary: 63 percent post about their vacations on social media to look back on the trip with rose-colored glasses; 58 percent to share photos in which they look best; 52 percent to post photos in which their surroundings look best; 37 percent to make friends/family jealous; and 27 percent to compete with others who post pictures of their own vacations.

Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers are not immune to the lure of social media in order to: look back on a trip (Gen X’ers: 46 percent and Baby Boomers: 23 percent); share photos in which they look best (Gen X’ers: 45 percent and Baby Boomers: 20 percent) and in which their surroundings look best (Gen X’ers: 44 percent and Baby Boomers: 15 percent); provoke jealousy (Gen X’ers: 20 percent and Baby Boomers: nine percent) and compete with others (Gen X’ers: 14 percent and Baby Boomers: three percent).

Ironically, those who have used social media in a deceptive manner are more likely to trust social media posts from users, brands and media. Of the respondents who posted on social media to make their vacation look better than reality, 87 percent trust posts from people they personally know; 69 percent trust those from brands; 69 percent trust media organizations/news outlets and 60 percent trust social users they do not know personally, including celebrities and social media influencers. Of all respondents, whether or not they’ve engaged in social media deception, 86 percent trust the accuracy of social media posts from people they know personally; 55 percent from brands; 46 percent from media organizations/news outlets and 31 percent from users they do not know.

With the role social media plays in the lives of Millennials, more than half (51 percent) feel that social media posts influence their own travel planning choices. Three in ten Americans of all age groups admit their travel planning choices are somewhat or very influenced by social media posts. Despite the prevalence of social media influencers working with destinations and brands, these respondents are still most influenced by posts of friends and family (63 percent), over posts from media and news organizations (11 percent), users they do not know personally (nine percent) or brands (eight percent).

Half (49 percent) of Americans say Facebook is the social media platform that most inspires them to travel, followed by Instagram (35 percent), Pinterest (19 percent), Twitter (13 percent) and Snapchat (13 percent). More than a third (34 percent) say that social media platforms do not inspire them to travel. Women are more likely to be inspired by Pinterest (25 percent of women compared to 12 percent of men) and men by Twitter (20 percent of men compared to seven percent of women).

“Social media changes the way we live, work, play and of course, travel. As millennials continue to lead trends, it will be interesting to see if social deception becomes a more common and even acceptable activity when portraying vacations to friends, family and followers,” says Dan Durazo, director of communications, Allianz Global Assistance USA. “Whether you plan to make your vacation look better than it was or not, the right travel insurance policy can protect you from the unexpected things that may go wrong – and your social media followers will never need to know that the trip wasn’t as perfect as it looked on Instagram.”

SOCIAL MEDIA DECEPTION
Have you ever posted images to your social media account(s) to make your vacations look better than they actually are in reality?
	Male	Female	Millennials (18-34)	Gen X’ers  (35 – 54)	Baby Boomers (55+)
Yes, more than once	14%	11%	26%	10%	3%
Yes, but just once	7%	4%	10%	5%	2%
No, never	63%	74%	59%	73%	72%
I don’t use social media accounts	16%	11%	5%	11%	23%
I try to make friends and family back home envious by posting pictures of my vacation on social media
Strongly/Somewhat Agree	28%	16%	37%	20%	9%
Strongly/Somewhat Disagree	72%	84%	63%	80%	91%
I try to compete with others who post pics of their vacations on social media by posting my own, better photos
Strongly/Somewhat Agree	22%	8%	27%	14%	3%
Strongly/Somewhat Disagree	78%	92%	73%	86%	97%
I post pics of my vacation on social media so that I can look back on my trip with rose-colored glasses once I’m home
Strongly/Somewhat Agree	46%	43%	63%	46%	23%
Strongly/Somewhat Disagree	54%	57%	37%	54%	77%
I take lots of pictures of myself on vacation and only post the shots where I look best
Strongly/Somewhat Agree	42%	41%	58%	45%	20%
Strongly/Somewhat Disagree	58%	59%	42%	55%	80%
I take lots of pictures of myself on vacation and only post the shots where my surroundings look best
Strongly/Somewhat Agree	40%	34%	52%	44%	15%
Strongly/Somewhat Disagree	60%	66%	48%	56%	85%