Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has removed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as leader of his transition team, handing the reins over to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, a former U.S. lawmaker with deep Washington ties, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The Times, citing several sources close to the transition team, said Trump told advisers he wanted to use Pence’s contacts to move the transition process along. NBC News also reported the handover, which came one week after two former Christie associates were found guilty in the New Jersey “Bridgegate” scandal.
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The past few months have weighed heavily on Walter Barrientos.
The 32-year-old former undocumented immigrant, who has relatives and friends who remain without legal status, has seen the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric from GOP nominee DonaldTrump’s presidential campaign spill over into everyday life. A relative of his was in the process of buying a home. But she thought twice when she saw a stream of Trump lawn signs in the neighborhood. His father, an electrician, has had clients ask for his papers (he’s a green card holder) and mock his limited English.
But as Election Day has neared and the contest grown tighter, that emotional toll has morphed into an acute anxiety. For Barrientos, the days are now filled with frantic calls from friends and family and regular checks of polling data. His dad, who had never been politically active during his 15 years living on Long Island, New York City, has felt it, too. For the first time in his life, he’s been doing Get Out The Vote drives for local candidates.
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Last month, several American white nationalists traveled to an anti-immigration conference in Wismar, Germany, and told attendants that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign represents a win for the movement—even if he loses the election.
Official speakers at the event— sponsored by an association of nationalistic parties in the European Union —included Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor at California State University, Long Beach who defends anti-Semitism and Tom Sunic, who has spoken at meetings sponsored by Klansmen, Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, and who was “serving as interpreter … for a very classy private German audience,” he told The Huffington Post. William Johnson, a white nationalist who was briefly a Trump delegate, made an unscheduled address at the event. Non-U.S. speakers included Frank Rennicke, a German singer-songwriter who is also a far-right extremist and Nick Griffin, a British politician who was once convicted of incitement to racial hatred. (Griffin “chewed all white activists out for not getting married and not having children,” Johnson said.)
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Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to stop clawing-back the bonuses that thousands of soldiers got for reenlisting to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There is no more important responsibility for the Department of Defense than keeping faith with our people,” Carter said in a statement. “That means treating them fairly and equitably, honoring their service and sacrifice, and keeping our word. Today, in keeping with that obligation, I am ordering a series of steps to ensure fair treatment for thousands of California National Guard soldiers who may have received incentive bonuses and tuition assistance improperly as a result of errors and in some cases criminal behavior by members of the California National Guard.”
Carter’s announcement was greeted with cheers in Kempner, Texas where Don and Susan Haley — both Iraq War veterans — had been struggling to pay back the bonuses they got when they reenlisted a decade ago in the California National Guard.
Donald Trump used small donors’ money to buy nearly $300,000 worth of books from the publisher of his Art of the Deal last month, continuing a pattern of plowing campaign money back into his own businesses.
The Oct. 15 Federal Election Commission filing for Trump Make America Great Again Committee does not specify which books in particular were purchased, but the committee’s own website suggests it was Trump’s 1987 business bestseller.
“I’ve signed an out-of-print, hardcover copy of ‘The Art of the Deal’ just for you, because I want you on board with Team Trump!” Trump wrote in an Aug. 2 fundraising email, which went on to offer the book for a minimum donation of $184.
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A photograph of Donald Trump, Muhammad Ali and Rosa Parks that the founder of Trump’s “diversity coalition” hailed as evidence the Republican nominee won an “NAACP medal” for “helping America’s inner cities” was actually taken at an awards ceremony organized by a business associate with an ethnic grievance.
William Fugazy, a politically well-connected businessman who later pleaded guilty to perjury, gave the awards to Trump and 79 other people, most of them white, to protest the awarding of “medals of liberty” to a group of 12 recent immigrants that included a Chinese-born architect, a Costa Rica-born astronaut, a leading expert on the psychology of race, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but no “Irish, Italian, or Polish” people.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime attorney, adviser and campaign surrogate, posted the photo on Twitter earlier this week of Trump, Parks and Ali, “receiving NAACP medals for helping America’s inner cities. A man for ALL people!”
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Diana Walker via Getty Images
President Ronald Reagan stands with his wife Nancy during the Statue of Liberty’s centennial celebration July 4, 1986 in New York City. Bill Fugazy resented the fact that Reagan presented awards to 12 immigrants, none of whom were Italian, Irish or Polish.
Taxpayers are now picking up most of Donald Trump’s air travel costs, unnecessarily spending millions of dollars because he insists on flying aboard his luxury 757 instead of a practical plane.
And because the GOP presidential nominee owns both the company that owns the jetliner and the one that operates it, some percentage of that taxpayer money is likely winding up as profit in Trump’s personal bank account.
The bombastic businessman has often bragged about the comforts of his ride, with its full bedroom, shower and 24-karat gold-plated bathroom fixtures. But because it seats so few passengers, Trump’s Secret Service agents appear to make up more than half of the plane’s flight manifests. And that means taxpayers are now legally required to pick up the majority of its staggering running costs.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump insists on flying aboard his luxury jet, rather than a more practical airplane. The cost to taxpayers: millions of dollars.
Democrats are finally paying attention to state politics.
Over the past few years, major donors, national Democrats, the White House and state officials have begun organizing to win back state houses that have been dominated by Republicans since 2010.
And even as the presidential race tightens nationally, Democrats are increasingly confident the party will be able flip a significant number of state legislative chambers, riding a wave of disgust with GOP nominee Donald Trump. At least 14 state House or Senate chambers are well within reach, according to a Democratic memo circulated this week.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took a shot at the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s health problems at a rally in Ohio on Wednesday night.
“I don’t know, folks, you think Hillary would be able to stand up here for an hour and do this? I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Trump said, after referring to the “hot” temperature in the room.
Trump, a 70-year-old whose BMI places him on the edge of obesity, later said he hopes Clinton recovers from her pneumonia, which lead to her nearly collapsing during a Sept. 11 remembrance event in New York over the weekend after she became “overheated.”
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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.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
James' World 2 