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A vote for Trump is a vote for action. For a wall along the southern border: 35
feet tall. No, 40 feet. Is Mexico complaining? Add another 10, and hand them the
tab. There’s nothing cost-effective about megalithic structures, which is their
whole point. There are cheaper ways to constrict the flow of migrants across the
border. Instead, Trump backs a big-government project. A yuuuuge
government project. And the crowds are eating it up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/trump-government-ethnocentrism/473538/ -- 2017 --
Back to top March 13:
A US WELFARE LAW EXPLORATION
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/welfare
November 5: Trump's Government of One ... In
late June, President Trump hosted a group of Native American tribal leaders at
the White House and urged them to "just do it" and extract whatever they want
from the land they control.
The exchange turned out to be an unusually vivid window into the almost kingly
power that Trump sees himself as holding, and which he has begun describing with
increasing bluntness. The scene was recounted by a source in the room and
confirmed by another. The White House didn't dispute the story.
The chiefs explained to Trump that there were regulatory barriers preventing
them from getting at their energy. Trump replied: "But now it's me. The
government's different now. Obama's gone; and we're doing things differently
here."
"Chief, chief," Trump continued,
addressing one of the tribal leaders, "what are they going to do? Once you get
it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean,
once it's out of the ground it can't go back in there. You've just got to do it.
I'm telling you, chief, you've just got to do it."
January 22: Trump declares victory after
senators strike deal to lift government shutdown ... Yet Democrats on Monday
made their own case for at least a partial victory. They noted that the new
spending plan lasts less than three weeks, winning them a commitment to work on
a permanent resolution to the issue of DREAMers, the undocumented immigrants who
came to the U.S. as children.
January 29: Hundreds of top government jobs
under Trump are unfilled. So who’s running things?
The federal government employs 2 million civilian workers nationwide, but many
positions at the top of the food chain remain empty a year into the Trump
presidency. Of more than 600 key jobs filled by presidential nomination, more
than half of them are currently vacant awaiting confirmation or have no nominee.
[For example] The opioid crisis. The White House Drug Control Office, meant to
work on the issue, has no director, and has seen several other appointees leave.
... Mr. Trump hasn’t made nominations for hundreds of ... jobs, and the 300-day
clock has run out. That’s creating an unprecedented situation. Those acting in
these jobs do not technically have the legal authority to do them anymore.
The president wants to shrink government. And that includes at the top. Mr.
Trump has fewer slots filled or nominated than any president in 25 years.
James Comey — the
fired FBI director, who has a hotly awaited memoir, "A
Higher Loyalty," coming out May 1 — uses his
Twitter feed to lob some of the most biting, terse commentary on White House
handling of the Russia probe:
February 3: The release of House
Republicans' memo alleging FBI abuses of its surveillance authority has
intensified an extraordinary feud between President Donald Trump and parts of
his own government.
Trump -- who campaigned on a theme of "law and order" -- and members of his
Republican Party, in power in Washington, are using the memo to sow distrust in
America's chief law enforcement agency and its investigation into Russia's
involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump on Saturday falsely claimed that the memo "totally vindicates" him in
special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe into whether his campaign
colluded with Russia.
February 3: Trump says FBI was a "tool" of
his opponents
President Trump is going after the FBI again this evening in a series of tweets
citing a
Wall Street Journal editorial that says the agency influenced the 2016
election
Undated:
Prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Sunlight joined other
transparency advocates in
expressing concern about the
future of open government data in the United States. We highlighted the ways
an
administration could alter government data that fell short of outright
removal, from defunding collection to limiting access to altering data sets.
Taking open government data offline entirely was the most extreme action we
anticipated.
Thankfully, that did not come to pass in 2017:
despite widespread concern, we do not have evidence that data has been
removed from federal websites after a year into the Trump presidency.
The raises, which amount to roughly $10,000 per year, will go into effect
tomorrow (Jan. 5), barring new legislation to stop them, according to
guidelines issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The members
of Trump’s cabinet, who are worth a combined $4.3 billion, will see their annual
pay go from from $199,700 to $210,700, courtesy of the US taxpayer. Deputy
secretaries will go from $179,700 to $189,600 per year. Vice president Mike
Pence’s salary will also increase, from $230,700 to $243,500. (Members of the
Senate and the House, who are still getting paid during the shutdown, will not
enjoy a bump in pay.)
https://qz.com/1515592/the-us-government-shutdown-means-raises-for-trumps-cabinet/
January 22:
The Supreme Court just weakened Trump's hand in government ...
The justices took no action Tuesday on a case before them concerning the
legality of the administration's decision to end the Obama-era immigration
policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
January 22:
Trump may have lost the Dreamer
issue as his main negotiating point on Tuesday [as regards the government
shutdown] when the Supreme Court refused, at least during this term, to consider
an administration appeal of lower court rulings allowing continued temporary
protections for the immigrant youths.
