Leave it to Donald Trump to reinvent the Cabinet meeting.
The public portion of these gatherings of all of the president’s top advisers are usually staid affairs. Photographers are let in to take pictures. The president makes a very brief statement. A reporter shouts a question, unanswered. The end.
Donald Trump did something very different in his Cabinet meeting Monday.
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First, he reviewed the various alleged successes of his first 143 days and made this remarkable claim: “Never has there been a president….with few exceptions…who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than I have.”
Um, ok. While Trump has signed a number of executive orders and actions — the most high profile of which, the so-called “travel ban” was, again, blocked by a court on Monday — what he hasn’t really done is pass actual legislation through Congress. The health care bill is tied up in Senate machinations. Tax reform hasn’t moved an inch. Funding for the border wall hasn’t happened. And so on.
The attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., plan to file a “major lawsuit” against President Donald Trump as early as Monday, they said Sunday night.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and his D.C. counterpart, Karl Racine, didn’t disclose the focus of the litigation, which they said in a statement they would formally announce Monday afternoon.
The Washington Post reported that the lawsuit would allege that Trump has violated constitutional anti-corruption restrictions by accepting payments and benefits from foreign governments since he became president.
No further details were immediately available.
. President Donald Trump signs executive orders at the Pentagon on Jan. 27. Olivier Douliery / EPA File
It’s no secret the tech industry is largely white and male. Anyone who doesn’t “fit the mold” faces challenges, from recruitment to the hiring process and throughout their careers. It’s no wonder Silicon Valley has an atrocious attrition rate.
What people seldom talk about is how discrimination begins before applicants even get through the door. In some cases, job listings are peppered with exclusionary language that might not be clear at first glance.
If being labeled a “hacker” won’t sink your future job prospects, expect to see some “dope” job listings with more details on the “hustle” than the health care. If you get hired, expect to “get crunk” once a month (or risk being a poor “culture fit”).
CNN has not renewed show host Reza Aslan’s program a week after the host was forced to apologize for calling President Donald Trump “a piece of shit” for Trump’s response to a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester.
“CNN has decided to not move forward with production on the acquired series Believer With Reza Aslan (season two),” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. “We wish Reza and his production team all the best.”
The news comes a week after Aslan had to apologize for calling Trump a “piece of shit” in a tweet. The tweet, which has since been deleted, read:
“This piece of shit is a not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”
Former FBI Director James Comey came to the Senate intelligence committee ready to unload, one month after President Donald Trump fired him, and he delivered.
Comey talked for close to three hours, answering a range of questions about the FBI’s Russia investigation, and his private interactions with Trump and his thinking about how he handled the Hillary Clinton email probe. And, like his previous hearings, he made it hard for Democrats and Republicans to extract clear victories beyond what he wanted to tell.
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Comey called President Donald Trump a liar — a lot
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say Saudi Arabia supported ISIS in the deadly twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday, an accusation likely to infuriate the Saudi kingdom amid high tensions in the region.
At least 12 people were killed when six attackers mounted simultaneous gun and suicide bomb assaults on Iran’s Parliament building and the tomb of the republic’s revolutionary founder, in one of the most audacious assaults to hit Tehran in decades. The targets were highly symbolic.
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Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shiite-majority Iran have had strained relations throughout their history and have been involved in a sectarian feud for more than 1,000 years. The two rivals are on opposite sides of the violent conflicts in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, and given the tensions, Iran’s implication about the attack isn’t a great shock.
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Six attackers went after two highly symbolic targets
Acting US ambassador to China David Rank resigned from his post in Beijing over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, several sources familiar with the decision told CNN.
A career foreign service officer since 1990, Rank assumed the position of deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Beijing in January 2016 and had been serving as charge d’affaires until the arrival of Trump’s pick for the job, former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who was confirmed by Congress late last month.
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“Dave is exactly the type of diplomat any American would want representing their interests abroad, and he was sought after within the State Department for increasingly difficult and challenging assignments because he’s strategic, smart, savvy, curious, loyal and non-partisan,” said Dan Feldman, who worked with Rank for five years on Afghan issues.
An ISIS leader who provided the group with the religious justification for turning “infidel” women into sex slaves was killed earlier this week in a U.S. airstrike, according to reports on jihadi websites.
Posts on ISIS forums in the “deep web” say Turki al-Binali, 32, was killed Monday.
Alex Kassirer of Flashpoint Intelligence, which tracks ISIS social media for NBC News, reports that jihadis “are posting a lot of photos of him and eulogizing him (many referring to him by his kunya (battle name), Abu Sufyan al-Sulami).”
Many of the social media posts carried an Arabic hashtag that translates into “the martyrdom of Sheikh Turki al-Binali.”
. Senior ISIS leader Turki al-Binali. via Flashpoint
Barely an hour after a news organization published an article about a Top Secret National Security Agency document on Russian hacking, the Justice Department announced charges against a 25-year-old government contractor who a senior federal official says was the leaker of the document.
The May 5, 2017 intelligence document published by The Intercept, an online news organization, describes new details about Russian efforts to hack voting systems in the U.S a week prior to the 2016 presidential election. While the document doesn’t say the hacking changed any votes, it “raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.”
Even as the document was ricocheting around Washington, the Justice Department announced that a criminal complaint was filed in the Southern District of Georgia charging Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.
. Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for sending classified material to a news organization, poses in a picture posted to her Instagram account. Handout / Reuters
In the best of Trump voters, there’s deep and intense dissatisfaction. A feeling that anything must be better than the politics of our memory, whether that memory is the few years of the 18 year old first time voter or the several decades of the elder Trump voter.
In many, I think, there’s an approach to politics that is identical to the approach to sport. You choose a team, and you root for them no matter what. Which is a foolish and dangerous approach to politics no matter who you’re voting for, and a core failure of civic education at school, in our communities, and in our homes.
But I’m not talking about the best of Trump voters here. I’m not talking about the rah-rah-go-team voters, or the reluctant ideologues who don’t like Trump but hate anyone outside the GOP more, or the impulse-shopper voters who went with whoever’s last sound bite they liked more, or the strategic ‘he’ll pick SCOTUS justices I’ll like’ voters or the on-the-fence voters who aren’t quite sure, somehow, who best represents their ideas and ethics.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Trump receives praise from cabinet
Comey called President Donald Trump a liar — a lot
Six attackers went after two highly symbolic targets
Source: Imgur gallery
James' World 2 