President Donald Trump complained on Monday that the United States is shouldering an unfair burden of the cost of the United Nations, but said if the world body reforms how it operates, the investment would be worth it. Trump, who has frequently criticized the cost to the United States of supporting the NATO alliance, took his concerns directly to the ambassadors of the U.N. Security Council, who joined him at the White House for a lunch. "If we do a great job, I care much less about the budget because you're talking about peanuts compared to the important work you're doing," Trump told the 15 council envoys. The United States is the biggest U.N. contributor, paying 22 percent of the $5.4 billion core budget and 28.5 percent of the $7.9 billion peacekeeping budget. These assessed contributions are agreed by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly. Trump said the U.S. share of those budgets was "unfair." He has proposed a 28 percent budget cut for diplomacy and foreign aid, which includes an unspecified reduction in funding for the United Nations and its agencies, as well as enforcement of a 25 percent cap on U.S. funding for peacekeeping operations. "We need the member states to come together to eliminate inefficiency and bloat and make sure that no one nation shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden," he said. Trump's remarks came as the General Assembly prepares to negotiate in the coming months the U.N. regular budget for both 2018 and 2019 and the peacekeeping budget from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met briefly with Trump at the White House on Friday for the first time since both took office earlier this year. The United States currently owes the United Nations $896 million for its core budget, U.N. officials said. The United States is also reviewing 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions as the annual mandates come up for renewal by the Security Council in a bid to cut costs. U.N. agencies such as the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), the children's agency UNICEF, and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), are funded by governments voluntarily. The State Department said this month it was ending funding for UNFPA, the international body's agency focused on family planning, as well as maternal and child health in more than 150 countries. Guterres warned that the cut could have "devastating effects" on vulnerable women and girls. In 2016, the United States was the top contributor to the UNDP's core budget, with an $83 million donation; the leading donor to UNICEF's core budget in 2015 with $132 million; and the fourth-largest donor to the UNFPA, giving $75 million.


FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday he has "not detected any whiff of interference" by the White House into the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Speaking publicly for the first time since being confirmed as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wray also expressed confidence in Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating whether President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during the election. "I can say very confidently that I have not detected any whiff of interference with that investigation," Wray said during a panel discussion at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington. Wray was installed as FBI director after his predecessor, James Comey, was fired by Trump in May. In an interview with NBC after Comey's removal, Trump admitted he was thinking about "this Russia thing" when he decided to fire the then-FBI chief. Comey later told Congress he believed Trump had tried to get him to drop an FBI probe into former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as part of the broader Russia investigation - testimony that has raised questions about whether Trump was potentially trying to obstruct justice. The White House has repeatedly denied the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the election. Trump's advisers and allies also have questioned Mueller's independence and credibility, with some pointing out that he has hired attorneys who have given political donations to Democrats. But Wray said he has "enormous respect" for Mueller, who is also a former FBI director. He stressed that Mueller is running the probe but said the FBI is assisting by dedicating agents and providing other support to the investigation. Wray also reiterated his confidence in a January report compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies which concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and tried to tilt it in Trump's favor - a finding Trump has often questioned. Prior to his confirmation as FBI director, Wray had only read a non-classified version of the report. "I have no reason to doubt the conclusions that the hard- working people who put that together came to," Wray said.


Britain is aiming to secure a comprehensive free trade deal with the European Union and wants it to be signed shortly after it leaves the bloc in 2019, Brexit minister David Davis said on Sunday. After securing an initial agreement on Friday to move Brexit talks to a second phase, Prime Minister Theresa May is keen to start discussing future ties with the EU, and especially the type of trading agreement to try to offer greater certainty for businesses. But despite Davis striking a confident tone, EU officials say they will only launch negotiations on a legally binding treaty after Britain leaves and becomes a third country , according to draft negotiating guidelines. It s not that complicated, it comes right back to the alignment point ... We start in full alignment, we start in complete convergence so we can work it out from there, Davis told the BBC s Andrew Marr show. The thing is how we manage divergence so it doesn t undercut the access to the market, he said, describing his preferred deal as Canada plus plus plus . The EU has been considering a post-Brexit free trade deal with Britain along the lines of one agreed last year with Canada. But the UK economy is nearly twice the size of Canada s and British officials have said that their current alignment with EU standards and much closer trading links with the continent give them scope for an even deeper relationship. May has been hailed by many in her deeply divided Conservative party for rescuing the agreement to unlock the Brexit talks by offering EU member Ireland and her allies in Northern Ireland a pledge to avoid any return of a hard border. By playing with the wording, May agreed that if the two sides failed to agree an overall Brexit deal, the United Kingdom would keep full alignment with those rules of the EU s single market that help cooperation between Ireland s north and south. Davis described the commitment as more of a statement of intent than a legally binding measure something that might reassure hardline Brexit campaigners who fear that it could imply that Britain was leaving the EU in name only. Despite last week s progress, May will enjoy little respite. The second phase of talks is expected to expose the rifts in her top team of ministers over what Britain should look like once it leaves the EU. On Saturday, environment minister Michael Gove, a Brexit campaigner, opened up the possibility of changing the terms of any agreement with the EU after Brexit if Britons felt that the deal had not reflected their demands to take back control . If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge, Gove wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph.


You could almost hear the gasps from both sides of the ideological divide when President Trump unveiled the outline of his first budget late last month, proposing to slice $54 billion from the discretionary civilian budget next year to pay for a defense. That part of the budget pays for pretty much everything the government does other than the military, pensions and health insurance for older people. And it has been slashed repeatedly already. It adds up to only some $500 billion, hardly the best place to balance a $4 trillion federal budget. After Mr. Trump's proposed cuts it would be 25 percent smaller than it was in 2010, adjusted for inflation. Even Republicans in Congress, no friends of government spending, argued that the math made little sense. While they share Mr. Trump's twin goals of balancing the budget and slashing taxes, they would prefer to square the circle by cutting the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare. And yet Mr. Trump's approach possesses a powerful political logic: The frazzled, anxious men and women who voted for him like Social Security, Medicare and defense. Other government spending, not so much. Notably, there is little political cost for Mr. Trump — in fact, potential benefit — in going after programs for the poor. These programs appeal to two constituencies that voters show little affinity for: the poor and urban liberal elites who can express enormous sympathy for the disenfranchised while ignoring the struggle of the white working class. While Mr. Trump is not the first Republican to propose cutting programs to pay for tax cuts, his bluntness breaks, at least rhetorically, with a Republican establishment that insists it cares about poverty. His political calculation could, paradoxically, protect Social Security and Medicare, entitlements that the Republican Party has tried so hard to rein in. But in areas as diverse as food stamps and housing assistance, education for the disadvantaged and Head Start, it could further fray the rest of America's threadbare social safety net. In "White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America," due out in May from Harvard Business Review Press, Joan C. Williams argues that white workers' resentment of the safety net should not be surprising: They get next to no benefit from it. Ms. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, writes that these struggling workers resent not only the poor beneficiaries of the government's largess but also the liberal policy makers who seem to believe that only the poor are deserving of help. And they bristle at the perceived condescension of a liberal elite that seems to blame them for their failure to acquire the necessary skills to rise to the professional class. By contrast, they see themselves as citizens who struggle to make ends meet, only to be left out of many of the government programs their taxes pay for. Over all, 61 percent of poor Americans draw from one benefit program or another, according to an analysis by the Census Bureau. But among families with incomes above the poverty line — many of which are barely better off, making just over $24, 000 for a family of four — only 13 percent do. Struggling families may not understand that welfare programs are so meager that the poor hardly get any help. But they can directly understand that they missed out on the tax credit because their family income hit $50, 000. It is not surprising that harried working mothers resent that 30 percent of families using child care receive some form of subsidy while families get next to nothing. "All they see is their daily lives, and they resent subsidies and sympathy available to the poor," Professor Williams wrote. President Barack Obama's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act — the most significant expansion of the safety net since the War on Poverty in the 1960s — has unsurprisingly bred class resentment, too. Many disgruntled workers see it as another program for poor people that just pushed up their own premiums, offering little of benefit. The whites who turned out so enthusiastically for Mr. Trump include people like Lee Sherman, 82, from Louisiana, living precariously on Social Security after a life of hard and dangerous work fitting pipes, and exposed to all manner of toxic chemicals, at a petrochemical plant. Aversion to the safety net is built into his moral view of the world. "He knew liberal Democrats wanted him to care more about welfare recipients," wrote the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who portrayed Mr. Sherman in her book "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" (The New Press). "But he didn't want their P. C. rules telling him who to feel sorry for. " To people like Mr. Sherman, government benefits tied to work, like Social Security and unemployment insurance, are legitimate rewards for one's effort. Welfare recipients, by contrast, just "lazed around days and partied at nights," he told Professor Hochschild. Racial mistrust is never far from the surface: Only 13 percent of whites draw benefits from programs, according to the Census Bureau analysis, compared with 42 percent of and 36 percent of Hispanics. So while most beneficiaries of welfare programs are white, many whites perceive them as schemes to hand their tax dollars to minorities. Mr. Trump's agenda serves both race and class resentment: Whites are twice as likely as blacks to prefer a smaller government, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Among Americans, 56 percent would like the government to be smaller and offer fewer services, while among the poor, only 38 percent would like the government to shrink. It is the whites whom Mr. Trump has promised to serve. These resentments are hard to swallow on the left of the political spectrum. Since the 1960s, at least, liberal activists have held to the belief that a grand progressive alliance was possible: working men and women, the poor, immigrants, racial and other minorities coming together in a coalition to counter conservatives and their corporate allies. November's election — when whites without a college degree voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton by 39 percentage points — pretty much drove a stake into those hopes. But could they be revived? As the president takes an ax to much of the government, the pressing question for liberals is whether a coalition can be built to protect the meager social safety net that remains. Could they draw back in the white voters who rejected them so soundly in November? These voters care less about gender rights and minorities. They may not share liberal views on abortion rights. They are unlikely to support a safety net that allows a poor woman to stay at home while offering nothing to a couple day and night shifts to care for their children. But, Professor Williams notes, the liberal goal can't be saved without them: "If America's policy makers better understood white anger against the social safety net, they might have a shot at creating programs that don't get gutted in this way. "


ATHENS, Ohio — After decades as one of America's most reliable political bellwethers, an inevitable presidential battleground that closely mirrored the mood and makeup of the country, Ohio is suddenly fading in importance this year. Hillary Clinton has not been to the state since Labor Day, and her aides said Thursday that she would not be back until next week, after a monthlong absence, effectively acknowledging how difficult they think it will be to defeat Donald J. Trump here. Ohio has not fallen into step with the demographic changes transforming the United States, growing older, whiter and less educated than the nation at large. And the two parties have made strikingly different wagers about how to win the White House in this election: Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, is relying on a demographic coalition that, while well tailored for Ohio even in the state's Democratic strongholds, leaves him vulnerable in the more diverse parts of the country where Mrs. Clinton is spending most of her time. It is a jarring change for political veterans here, who relish being at the center of the country's presidential races: Because of newer battleground states, Mrs. Clinton can amass the 270 electoral votes required to win even if she loses Ohio. "Their map is a little different, and Ohio is not as crucial as it once was," conceded James Ruvolo, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party who lives in the Toledo area, a Democratic bulwark that Mrs. Clinton has not visited once this year. "They'll keep putting in money, but I don't think they're going to put a lot of her time in here. " Ohio has long basked in the presidential spotlight. Every four years, fall would bring frequent candidate visits, ceaseless television commercials and breathless, tallies of its voting returns late into election night. Democrats in the state became used to rallies, like the ones John Kerry staged in Cleveland and Columbus with Bruce Springsteen in 2004 and President Obama held at Ohio State to kick off his 2012 campaign. Mr. Obama held five events over three trips to Ohio in September 2012 alone. And it was all for good reason: No candidate of either party has won the White House without carrying Ohio since John F. Kennedy in 1960. But its Rust Belt profile, Mr. Trump's unyielding campaign and Mrs. Clinton's difficulty energizing Ohio's young voters have made it a lesser focus for Democrats this year, even as it remains critical to Mr. Trump's path to the White House. As Mrs. Clinton's aides privately note, the demographic makeup of Florida, Colorado and North Carolina, which have a greater percentage of educated or nonwhite voters, makes those states more promising for Democrats in a contest in which the electorate is sorted along bright racial and economic lines. And with a Senate race in Ohio turning into a rout for Rob Portman, the Republican incumbent, Democrats can quietly pull back from the state with little fear of consequences. As the place where Appalachia meets the Midwest, and where industrial centers arose not far from a vast farm belt, Ohio has prided itself on being a version of America writ small. Its immigration patterns reflected that, with New Englanders resettling here, followed by Germans and Eastern Europeans. At the same time, Southerners, white and black, crossed the Ohio River in search of freedom and opportunity. But even some of the state's proudest boosters acknowledge that Ohio, which is nearly 80 percent white, is decreasingly representative of contemporary America. "Ohio, like a melting iceberg, has slowly been losing its status as the country's bellwether," said Michael F. Curtin, a Democratic state legislator and former Columbus Dispatch editor who is an author of the state's authoritative "Ohio Politics Almanac. " He continued: "It's a slow melt. But we have not captured any appreciable Hispanic population, and there has been very little influx of an Asian population. When you look at the diversity of America 30 to 40 years ago, Ohio was a pretty close approximation of the country. It no longer is. " What is less clear than the racial trends is whether the state will continue to grow more forbidding for Democrats in future presidential races. That could be determined by the choices the national parties make after the election, particularly whether Republicans continue Mr. Trump's project of shifting from a to a more populist approach on immigration and trade. "If the Republican Party looks more like the Trump coalition and the Democratic Party looks more like the Obama coalition, then the states Democrats must win will no longer be Ohio and Iowa," said David Wilhelm, a manager of Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign and a former Democratic national chairman who lives in suburban Columbus. "They will be Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. " Yet that same Obama coalition was enough to hand the president a victory in Ohio in 2012, when the state's demographics were no less challenging for Democrats. The difference now, Ohio voters and strategists from both parties say, is in the two candidates and the issues at hand. Facing Mitt Romney, who was easily caricatured as a country club Republican, Mr. Obama battered him as a handmaiden for the wealthy and criticized his opposition to the auto bailout, which lifted Mr. Obama with white union Democrats in communities around Youngstown and Toledo. But this year, Republicans have put forward a candidate whose views on trade are indistinguishable from, if not more than, the A. F. L. . I. O. 's. "Republicans used to run on God and guns," Mr. Ruvolo said. "Well, Trump added a third element: trade. " Paired with Mr. Trump's jeremiads about immigrants' taking American jobs, it makes for a powerful combination in a state that has suffered from the decline of manufacturing. Though he lost the Ohio primary to Gov. John Kasich, Mr. Trump still carried a stretch of counties along the eastern spine of the state, its most economically depressed region, where thousands of industrial and jobs have been lost. Mr. Trump is expected to pile up significant margins in those counties in November. Some political veterans speak with wonder about private polls showing Mr. Trump leading even in bedrock Democratic communities. "I see, at best, lack of enthusiasm in traditional Democratic areas," said Dennis E. Eckart, a former Democratic congressman from suburban Cleveland. Mike Dawson, a Republican strategist who runs a website on Ohio's political history, said Mr. Trump would be competitive in two counties in Youngstown's Mahoning Valley that the Democratic presidential candidate has carried in every election for 60 years with the exception of 1972. It is no coincidence that the same region kept Representative James A. Traficant Jr. from 1985 to 2002, despite his routine flouting of ethics. Mr. Traficant, a longtime Democrat who died in 2014, was known for mixing inflammatory rhetoric, a toupee and a populism. "There is not a dime's worth of difference, as George Wallace once said, between Jim Traficant and Donald Trump," said Mr. Eckart, whose district abutted Mr. Traficant's. "They say anything, do anything, just act outrageous, and people just kind of like that. " Mrs. Clinton remains strongest in the more affluent and educated areas around Ohio's population centers — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati — where some voters who backed Mr. Romney four years ago are appalled by Mr. Trump. Emily Huber, a evangelical Christian and loyal Republican in Columbus, is one of them. As she sold candles and jewelry made by victims of sex trafficking at a farmer's market in the shadow of the state capitol, Ms. Huber said she and her husband were unsure whether they could back Mr. Trump because of offensive comments that she said "show his true character. " What will determine who wins Ohio, said Representative Steve Stivers, a Republican, is if "Hillary can pick up a bunch of voters in the suburbs to offset the rural and some of the industrial areas. " Mrs. Clinton has an organizational advantage, with 60 offices across the state, and is flooding Ohio with surrogates: Bill Clinton is expected in the state on a bus tour next week. But her campaign is sensitive about her absence, which has become a local topic of discussion. After this article was published online, it hurried to announce that she would return on Monday, but without specifying which city she would visit. A Clinton victory in Ohio may also require rousing younger voters, which is in doubt. When a group of Democratic Ohio mayors campaigned recently for Mrs. Clinton in Athens — home of Ohio University and seat of the county with the state's largest percentage of millennials — they drew little interest. As students stopped at sidewalk A. T. M.s to prepare for parents weekend, they expressed only lukewarm support for Mrs. Clinton. Paula Atfield, a freshman from Cleveland, said she was voting for Mrs. Clinton because "she's not Trump," but added that the election was seen as "a joke" on campus. "Neither of them are suitable," she said. "Most people aren't even voting. " At a news conference earlier in the day, the Dayton mayor, Nan Whaley, had declared that the state would send Mrs. Clinton to the White House. "Ohio is the decider of presidents," she said. But now, Ms. Whaley sounded less bullish. "I think it's crucial," she said of a Clinton victory in Ohio, before quickly adding of Mr. Trump, "It's just not as crucial as his. "


Five top German politicians received envelopes on Thursday that contained threatening letters and a white powder the letters said was anthrax, which turned out to be harmless, Berlin police said. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly received one of the letters, the broadcaster ARD said on its website, but the police spokesman did not confirm that. Special security forces were deployed to investigate the incident, a spokesman for the Berlin State Criminal Police office said, confirming news that was first reported ARD. Horst Seehofer, who heads the Bavarian sister party of Merkel s conservatives, told journalists he had received one of the letters. ARD said the other letters went to Katrin Goering-Eckardt and Hans-Christian Stroebele, members of the pro-environment Greens party, and Gregor Gysi, former chief of the left-wing Left party. Stroebele confirmed the incident in a posting on Twitter. He told ARD that the letter was probably sent by right-wing extremists, even though it was written in Arabic. He gave no explanation. A photograph of the letter included the phrases Salafist community, Germany and Lethal, Do not touch, Dangerous, Caution - all in typewritten Arabic characters.


On Friday morning, a US airstrike killed Abu Alaa al-Afri, a senior leader in ISIS, whom the US says it considers the organization's second-ranked leader. This isn't the first time al-Afri has been reported dead — though the US government has allegedly verified his death. But if (as seems likely) al-Afri is dead, this will be yet another instance in which ISIS's No. 2 official has been killed. In August of last year, for example, a US airstrike killed Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, then identified as the group's No. 2. This continues a trend that news consumers may recognize from counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda, in which the group seemed to lose one third-in-command (after Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri) after another. As some Twitter wags noted, this all harks back to a 2006 Onion article, "Eighty Percent Of Al-Qaeda No. 2s Now Dead." But what's actually going on here? Why is the US killing so many ISIS deputies while somehow failing to hit leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? And does it even matter when you kill top-level ISIS officials? Analysts have developed a few theories as to why the US keeps hitting second-in-commands but not the leader. One of the most plausible is that Baghdadi is a much harder target, whereas the nature of the No. 2 job involves exposing oneself to greater risk of being targeted. As a leader, Baghdadi serves as ISIS's chief executive and ideological head. He doesn't have to move around all that much or actually go out in the field; his job mostly involves issuing orders and, on occasion, making propaganda tapes. That means he can sit wherever he's hiding out, avoiding the kind of contact with the outside world that makes it easier for US intelligence agencies to find you. However, not every ISIS leader has the luxury of doing that. Baghdadi's top subordinates, the ones he gives orders to, have to go out in the field and run ISIS operations. If you command a major combat theater in Iraq, for example, you actually have to be in that part of Iraq. If you run ISIS finances, you need to make sure the extortion and oil operations are running smoothly. When you're out actually doing the work — managing ISIS outposts, talking to people lower down on the food chain — you can't hide away like Baghdadi does. That makes it easier for US electronic, satellite, or human intelligence assets to find you — and serve up targeting data for an airstrike. This difference in responsibilities probably explains why the US, despite targeting Baghdadi multiple times, hasn't managed to kill him — and yet has successfully taken out many of his deputies. "That would be my guess," Will McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me. While the US government is understandably trumpeting its alleged strike on al-Afri, there's reason to suspect that killing the group's No. 2 isn't actually all that consequential. Groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda are bureaucratic by design, so they are often able to deal with drone-struck senior officers by rapidly promoting new people to replace them. This theory got some quantitative support in a 2014 study by the University of Georgia's Jenna Jordan, who found that so-called "decapitation" strikes — in which the US killed a senior leader of a terrorist group — had little effect on reducing violence from that group. In the paper, Jordan argues that this is because al-Qaeda is a bureaucratic organization: It has something like a formal command structure, division of labor, clear assignment of responsibilities, and the like. This allows lower-level leaders to take over after one is killed. And this would likely apply to ISIS as well. "Each individual decapitation doesn't cripple the organization," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me. So al-Afri's killing probably will not, in itself, be that consequential for ISIS's future. That said, Gartenstein-Ross pointed out that al-Afri had "strong connections within the al-Qaeda network." ISIS and al-Qaeda are at war in Syria, which distracts and thus weakens both of them, and there is little reason to believe that this is changing. But Gartenstein-Ross points out that the possibility of rapprochement, while already quite low, may have just gotten a little lower with al-Afri's killing. "Given his connections, [there was] a danger that he could be involved in rapprochement between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State," he said. However, the ideological and personal gaps between the two groups will likely remain too wide to bridge anytime in the near future. That would have been true even if al-Afri had lived. So his death is probably not a substantial change for ISIS's prospects.


Republican efforts to overhaul the U.S. tax code have hit a snag in the House of Representatives, where infighting over spending cuts is delaying adoption of a legislative tool they need to move a tax bill forward. The House Budget Committee canceled plans to send a budget resolution for fiscal 2018 to the floor this week, lawmakers said on Tuesday, as conservative Republicans pushed to add hundreds of billions of dollars in mandatory spending cuts to the blueprint. House and Senate passage of a budget resolution is vital to President Donald Trump's pledge to deliver on tax reform this year because the document would free Republicans to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate. But the push to cut programs including Medicaid and food stamps, which benefit the poor, could lead to a stalemate. Trump administration officials and Republican leaders in Congress are working separately to agree on a tax bill that can be unveiled in September. "No budget, no tax reform," said Representative Mark Walker, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 150 conservative lawmakers. "That's why there should be a sense of urgency to get this done pretty quick." Their aim is to cut mandatory programs that are required by law and viewed as principle drivers of deficit spending. The result could be legislation containing lower taxes for the wealthy and corporations alongside reduced benefits for the poor. Lawmakers say there is Republican agreement on topline discretionary spending levels of $621.5 billion for defense and $511 billion for non-defense programs. Representative Jim Jordan, a leading member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is pushing to cut as much as $400 billion over a decade from a range of programs that benefit the poor. Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said he wanted another $295 billion in cuts on top of that. "It has to be linked to tax reform, because we believe tax reform is going to happen," Jordan said in an interview. The budget committee canceled its plans this week after the chairmen of several other panels pushed back against efforts to include $250 billion in spending cuts. "The end game is to get a budget out of the committee," House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black told reporters. "I do see a viable path. And I am going to continue to push."


In a desperate bid to normalize the Republican Party s insane stance on keeping Scalia s seat on the Supreme Court empty, a new talking point is being tried out by conservatives: There s no time limit in the Constitution, and there s nothing magical about there being nine justices, [Dean] Reuter said during a panel meeting at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The country started out with six justices, we ve had as many as ten at some point in time, he continued. As recently as 2010, when Justice Elena Kagan came on the Court, she had been solicitor general so she recused herself in over a third of the cases (so) I don t see a sense of urgency. I fully expect this to be repeated over and over again and eventually mimicked by the corporate media. If there s one thing besides crippling America that the GOP is really good at, it s making their sabotage seem perfectly normal. The corporate media is always a willing accomplice to this charade as they will tie themselves into knots to avoid calling out the historic extremism of the right.A side benefit of using this kind of rhetoric to keep the 9th seat empty for so long is that when a Democrat wins in November, they ll already have normalized a reduced Court. It s like stacking the Court, adding seats to dilute the power of one set of Justices, but in reverse.On the flip side, if Republicans were to somehow win in November, I wouldn t be at all surprised if they suddenly realized that 9 Justices just aren t enough and we really should have 11, 7 of whom would just happen to be conservative. For a group that calls themselves conservatives, ostensibly the party that preserves the status quo, the American right wing has zero interest in preserving tradition, precedent or the Constitution. They re only interested in preserving their own power at any expense.


The Obama administration urged Congress to pass legislation to help Puerto Rico resolve a debt crisis which was expected to trigger a bond default on Monday. "Congress has yet to produce a workable legislative response," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in a letter to Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. "Congress must work quickly to resolve the few outstanding issues on the proposed legislation to help Puerto Rico."


United Airlines barred two teenage girls from boarding a flight on Sunday morning and required a child to change into a dress after a gate agent decided the leggings they were wearing were inappropriate. That set off waves of anger on social media, with users criticizing what they called an intrusive, sexist policy, but the airline maintained its support for the gate agent's decision. The girls, who were about to board a flight to Minneapolis, were turned away at the gate at Denver International Airport, the company said on Sunday. United doubled down on that decision, defending it in a series of tweets on Sunday. The incident was first reported on Twitter by Shannon Watts, a passenger at the airport who was waiting to board a flight to Mexico. In a telephone interview from Mexico on Sunday afternoon, Ms. Watts said she noticed two visibly upset teenage girls leaving the gate next to hers. Both were wearing leggings. Ms. Watts went over to the neighboring gate and saw a "frantic" family with two young girls, one of whom was also wearing leggings, engaged in a tense exchange with a gate agent who told them, "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them. " Ms. Watts said the girl's mother told her the two teenagers had just been turned away because the gate agent said their pants were not appropriate travel attire. The woman had a dress in her bag that the child was able to pull on over her pants, and the family boarded the flight. "The girl pulled a dress on," Ms. Watts said. "But please keep in mind that the dad had on shorts that did not hit his knee — they stopped maybe two or three inches above his knee — and there was no issue with that. " Ms. Watts judged that the two girls who were barred from boarding were in their "young teens" and the girl who changed into a dress was 10 or 11. Ms. Watts described the situation in a series of tweets before her flight to Mexico took off. By the time she landed her tweets had been shared widely, often accompanied by sharp criticism directed at the airline. Jonathan Guerin, a spokesman for United, confirmed that two teenage girls were told they could not board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis because their leggings violated the company's dress code policy for "pass travelers," a company benefit that allows United employees and their dependents to travel for free on a standby basis. Mr. Guerin said pass travelers are "representing" the company and as such are not allowed to wear Lycra and spandex leggings, tattered or ripped jeans, midriff shirts, or any article of clothing that shows their undergarments. "It's not that we want our standby travelers to come in wearing a suit and tie or that sort of thing," he said. "We want people to be comfortable when they travel as long as it's neat and in good taste for that environment. " He said both teenage girls stayed behind in Denver, "made an adjustment" to their outfits and waited for the next flight to Minneapolis. Mr. Guerin did not know if they had successfully boarded or not, and also had no information about the girl Ms. Watts said she saw change into a dress at the gate. The company largely confirmed Ms. Watts's account earlier in the day in a response to her on Twitter that did little to mollify the concerns of its critics. In a series of dozens of tweets, the company said the incident was not simply the result of an overzealous gate agent. Instead, it said United Airlines reserved the right to deny service to anyone its employees deemed to be inappropriately dressed. It also referred to the dress code applied to pass travelers. "In our Contract of Carriage, Rule 21, we do have the right to refuse transport for passengers who are barefoot or not properly clothed," the company tweeted. It added, "There is a dress code for pass travelers as they are representing UA when they fly. " Few critics appeared to be satisfied by that explanation, which also did little to a perilous public relations situation for the company. United was the target of scores of angry and mocking tweets on Sunday, including from social celebrities like the model Chrissy Teigen and the actor LeVar Burton. By Sunday afternoon, the company's Twitter account was engaged in a tense back and forth with the Academy actress Patricia Arquette, who posted dozens of angry tweets about the situation. Employees running United's Twitter account spent the day walking a public relations tightrope: explaining to angry social media users why the company was not wrong to bar the young women from boarding, while reassuring potential customers that they would not also be barred if they showed up in leggings. People like to be comfortable when they fly, Ms. Watts said, and leggings and yoga pants have become standard casual attire for women. "I'm pretty sure yoga pants are a thing," Ms. Watts said. "They're part of modern America. They're a staple, a clothing item. " Mr. Guerin said the company was aware of the criticism leveled at its social media team, but said they were "working as hard as they can. " "We could have stopped to immediately ask the right questions," he said. "We are always engaging with our customers as quickly as possible. Now we are going back. All day we've been going back since that earlier tweet. Now we're going back and telling people what is actually going on. "


The United States' top transportation official on Wednesday promoted the Trump administration's proposed privatization of the air traffic control system in the face of criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans. "Our air traffic organization must be more nimble," U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told the Senate Commerce Committee. "A bulky federal government procurement apparatus does not move fast enough to keep pace with new technologies and new demands." President Donald Trump on Monday unveiled the plan to modernize air traffic control and lower flying costs. Under the proposal, air traffic control would be spun off from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and put under the aegis of a nonprofit entity. Critics say the plan would hand control of a key asset to special interests and big airlines. Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said on Wednesday that small airports in his state oppose the plan. He said that after air traffic privatization in the United Kingdom airline passenger fees rose 30 percent. "This is a tough sell," Wicker said. Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said he remains "skeptical" of the idea of removing Congress from air traffic control oversight and handing it to a 13-member board. The administration says it would not charge the private entity for the government's air traffic control assets and would bar Congress from reviewing fees charged by the board. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, opposes the proposal. "Why give away billions of dollars in government assets to an entity that will be governed in large part by the airlines?" he asked. Nelson argued "a fundamental breakup of the FAA cannot advance when there are such strong divisions among aviation stakeholders and in Congress. It just won't happen." Chao denied that the major airlines would control the board and said they would have just two seats on the board. She also pledged to address rural concerns. One big issue is whether general aviation could face higher costs and access to airspace if a private board takes over. Executives from United Airlines (UAL.N), Hawaiian Airlines Inc [HAII.UL], American Airlines Inc (AAL.O) and Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N), all represented by the Airlines for America lobbying group, praised the Trump plan on Monday. The FAA spends nearly $10 billion a year on air traffic control funded largely through passenger user fees, and has spent more than $7.5 billion on next-generation air traffic control reforms in recent years. It is unclear whether privatization would speed the rollout of new systems such as satellite-based aircraft tracking that replaces ground radar dating back to World War Two.


The Smithsonian s Museum of African-American History opened to much fanfare, and also, much hatred from white people who think that such a thing is an affront to white history and therefore, reverse discrimination. Since Trump was elected, hate crimes and incidents have skyrocketed, and now, some racist asshat (or more than one) has decided to take their hatred straight to that museum.By hanging a noose.Yes, seriously. Someone hung a noose up in the Museum of African-American History. And not just once, but twice over the last four days. The noose isn t an innocent symbol. It s a stark and painful reminder of the days when lynching was common practice, particularly against black people.Which is precisely the reason these people hang nooses like that. According to a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, it s been a long time since we saw hatred like this: We haven t seen such mainstream support for hate in decades, not since the Civil Rights era 50 years ago. We re witnessing a moment when there are tremendous challenges to the country that we built on pluralism and democracy. The civil rights accorded every American are firmly under threat. But people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, and every other marginalized group out there is apparently a direct threat to the straight, white, Christian American, and Trump s election has empowered them to act like they re just taking their country back from the scourge of political correctness they so decried during the campaign.The Smithsonian issued their own statement about this, and they cut whoever it is that s responsible for the nooses: The Smithsonian family stands together in condemning this act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity, wrote the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution David Skorton in an Institution-wide email. We will not be intimated. Cowardly acts like these will not, for one moment, prevent us from the vital work we do. People who do this are trying to drag our country back to a time when they were comfortable because they could step on everybody different from them. We can t let that continue to happen.Featured image by Astrid Riecken via Getty Images


They still talk about the Saturday night here 27 years ago when Donald J. Trump partied with former President Richard M. Nixon. Dressed in tuxedos, they sang "Happy Birthday" to Texas royalty — former Gov. John B. Connally and his wife, Nellie, whose birthdays were a few days apart — as Nixon played the tune on a white baby grand piano. They dined at Tony's, the "21" Club of Houston, and Nixon was so fond of the cannelloni pasta that he asked the owner, Tony Vallone, to write the recipe for him on a yellow legal pad. And when it was all over, Mr. Trump flew Nixon back to New York on his 727 private jet. It happened one weekend in March 1989. It was one of Nixon's first public appearances since the Watergate scandal had forced him to resign in 1974. And it was one of Mr. Trump's first presidential experiences, as he socialized with and had the ear of a former president for two days in Houston at a gala event, an impromptu at Tony's, a Sunday brunch the next day at a River Oaks mansion and later aboard his plane. "I think you can see a core of Trump in this," said Barry Silverman, a Houston advertising and marketing consultant who helped coordinate the gala and was a longtime friend of the Connallys. "He obviously had a road map a lot bigger than any of us ever thought about. " Mr. Silverman and Mr. Vallone said they did not know what, specifically, Mr. Trump and Nixon had talked about at the gala or at Tony's. But the time they spent together that weekend most likely fed Mr. Trump's fascination with and admiration of Nixon. During the campaign, Mr. Trump borrowed phrases from him, used his speech at the 1968 Republican convention as a template for his own convention address, and spoke glowingly of Nixon in interviews. The Connallys helped bring the fallen president and the future together. They had met Mr. Trump a few months earlier at a wedding in New York in December 1988, and Mr. Connally had been a close friend of Nixon's, serving as his Treasury secretary. Nixon was already familiar with Mr. Trump. The former president had written an unsolicited letter to Mr. Trump in 1987, informing him that Nixon's wife, Pat, had predicted "that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!" Mr. Connally invited Mr. Trump and his wife, Ivana, to Houston as special guests at "A Night for Nellie," an event to honor Mrs. Connally at the Westin Galleria hotel on March 11, 1989. Houston was just coming out of the 1980s oil bust. Tens of thousands of workers had lost their jobs and homes. Banks had failed. Mr. Connally filed for bankruptcy in 1987, and he and his wife were forced to auction their belongings to help repay creditors in 1988. Then Mrs. Connally learned she had breast cancer. "A Night for Nellie" raised more than $300, 000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, but it also sought to lift Mrs. Connally's spirits — and Houston's. Barbara Walters was there, along with the airline executive Frank Lorenzo and the elite of Houston society, including Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. an oilman, and his wife, Lynn, who hosted Nixon, Mr. Trump and others at their mansion the next day. In the hotel ballroom, Mr. Trump introduced Nixon and sat at the head table with him. Mr. Connally had assembled the seating chart for the table himself. His wife was seated with Mr. Trump on one side of her and Nixon on the other. Mr. Trump, the event's honorary chairman, seemed to be enjoying himself. He was 42 years old, and his book "Trump: The Art of the Deal," which had been published in November 1987, had enjoyed a position on The New York Times's list for nearly a year. "Donald Trump would have made a sensational Texan," Ms. Walters told the audience, according to The Austin . Mr. Connally decided late in the evening to keep the party going for some of the V. I. P.s at Tony's. Mr. Vallone had about a to clear a third of the restaurant and put on an elaborate buffet. He has wined and dined a host of celebrities and presidents at his restaurant, including Frank Sinatra, Princess Margaret, Andy Warhol and former President Bill Clinton. But he said that night in 1989 was the most memorable. "There was tremendous enthusiasm and electricity in the air," Mr. Vallone said. "Trump had a commanding presence. People say he's pompous, but he was not pompous. He was very approachable. He'll talk to the waiters. After that, I went out and bought six or eight of his books and gave them away as gifts, I was so impressed with Trump. " At Tony's, Mr. Trump suggested he was taking a business interest in Houston. "Every time I'm in a particular city that I like, and Houston happens to be a city that I like very much, I do look," he told an ABC affiliate, as he stood in the restaurant. Nixon stayed there until 1 a. m. The party continued well after. "Dom Pérignon was flowing like ginger ale," Mr. Silverman said, "and it went on until 3 in the morning. " The next day, the Trumps, the Connallys and Nixon were among 36 guests at a brunch at the Wyatts' mansion. They ate beef Wellington and sipped Champagne with dessert. Ms. Wyatt, one of Houston's most prominent socialites and philanthropists, asked Nixon to speak about world affairs, and Nixon stood, gave a brief speech and then took questions. Asked if Mr. Trump had asked a question, Ms. Wyatt replied: "I'm sure he did. Everybody did. I was so proud of my guests because they asked such intelligent questions. I don't have any stupid friends. "


British Prime Minister Theresa May s meeting with European Union officials last week was constructive and friendly , her spokesman said on Monday when asked about an unflattering newspaper account of the meeting in a German newspaper. I think you re referring to a newspaper article with no quotes in it, but I have no comment whatsoever on that, the spokesman said. He referred to a joint statement issued following the meeting last week which said the talks were constructive and friendly.


Written by Robert Parry Two weeks after Donald Trump's shocking upset of Hillary Clinton, the imperious and imperial neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist understudies may finally be losing their tight grip on US foreign policy. The latest sign was Trump's invitation for a meeting with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on Monday. The mainstream media commentary has almost completely missed the potential significance of this start-of-the-work-week meeting by suggesting that Trump is attracted to Gabbard's tough words on "radical Islamic terrorism." Far more important is that Gabbard, a 35-year-old Iraq War veteran, endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries because of his opposition to neocon/liberal-hawk military adventures. She starred in one of the strongest political ads of the campaign, a message to Hawaiians, called "The Cost of War." "Bernie Sanders voted against the Iraq War," Gabbard says. "He understands the cost of war, that that cost is continued when our veterans come home. Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home." In the ad, Gabbard threw down the gauntlet to the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, by accusing them of wasting trillions of dollars "on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars." Her comments mesh closely with Trump's own perspective. After the meeting on Monday, Gabbard released a statement confirming that the focus of the discussion had been her opposition to escalating the war in Syria by following neocon/liberal-hawk suggestions for a "no-fly zone" that would require widespread US military destruction of Syrian government installations and the killing of a large number of Syrians. "President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as other foreign policy challenges we face," Gabbard said. "I felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeat of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government — a war which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families. … "While the rules of political expediency would say I should have refused to meet with President-elect Trump, I never have and never will play politics with American and Syrian lives. … "I shared with [President-elect Trump] my grave concerns that escalating the war in Syria by implementing a so-called no fly/safe zone would be disastrous for the Syrian people, our country, and the world. It would lead to more death and suffering, exacerbate the refugee crisis, strengthen ISIS and al-Qaeda, and bring us into a direct conflict with Russia which could result in a nuclear war." Trading Places So, the surprise election results on Nov. 8 may have represented a "trading places" moment for the neocons and liberal hawks who were eagerly counting the days before the "weak" President Barack Obama would turn over the Commander-in-Chief job to former Secretary of State Clinton who had made clear that she shared their hawkish agenda of escalating the war in Syria with a "no-fly/safe zone," and ratcheting up the New Cold War with Russia. There was even speculation that one of Clinton's neocon favorites within the State Department, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, might be rewarded with State's top job for her "regime change" in Ukraine that sparked the start of the New Cold War in 2014. Nuland, the wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan , sabotaged President Obama's emerging strategy of collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin on sensitive global issues. In 2013-14, Putin helped orchestrate two of Obama's brightest foreign policy successes: Syria's surrender of its chemical weapons arsenal and Iran's guarantee that it would not develop nuclear weapons. But those agreements infuriated the neocons who favored escalating both crises into direct US bombing campaigns aimed at Syria and Iran – in accordance with the desires of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi monarchy. Yet, there was perhaps even greater alarm at what the next move of the Obama-Putin tag team might be: demanding that Israel finally get serious about a peace deal with the Palestinians. So, the neocons took aim at Ukraine, which neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman identified as "the biggest prize" and an important stepping stone to an even bigger prize, a "regime change" in Moscow removing Putin . While Gershman's NED funded (with US taxpayers' money) scores of projects inside Ukraine, training anti-government activists and journalists, Nuland took the point as the key organizer of a putsch that removed elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, and replaced him with a fiercely anti-Russian regime. Given the geopolitical sensitivity of Ukraine to Russia, including its naval base on the Crimean peninsula, Putin had little choice but to react, supporting a referendum in Crimea in which 96 percent of the voters favored leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia – and assisting ethnic Russian rebels in the east who resisted the violent ouster of their president. Of course, the mainstream Western news media presented these developments as simply a case of "Russian aggression" and a "Russian invasion." And, faced with this new "group think," Obama quickly abandoned his partner, Putin, and joined in the chorus of condemnations. Nuland emerged as a new star inside the State Department, a hero of the New Cold War which was expected to funnel trillions of tax dollars into the Military-Industrial Complex. Trump's Heresy But Trump surprisingly adopted the position that Obama shied away from, a recognition that Putin could be an important asset in resolving major international crises. The real-estate-mogul-turned-politician stuck to that "outside-the-mainstream" position despite fierce attacks from rival Republicans and Democratic presidential nominee Clinton, who even mocked him as Putin's "puppet." After Trump's upset victory on Nov. 8, many pundits assumed that Trump would fall back in line with Washington's hawkish foreign-policy establishment by giving top jobs to neocons, such as former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, or Netanyahu favorites, such as former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney or ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. So far, however, Trump has followed a different course, more in line with the libertarian thinking of the Koch brothers – not only the more famous ones, Charles and David, but also their long-estranged brother William, who I'm told have become behind-the-scenes advisers to the President-elect. Though Trump did offer high-profile meetings to the likes of Romney and Giuliani, he has yet to hand over any key foreign-policy job to the Republican neocon wing. His one major announcement in that area has been naming as National Security Advisor retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency when it produced a prescient warning that US policy in Syria would lead to the creation of an "Islamic State." Though Flynn is regarded as a hardliner in the fight against Islamic jihadist terror, he is seen as an independent thinker regarding how best to wage that war. For instance, Flynn has objected to the notion that drone strikes, i.e., killing off individual jihadists, is a route to success. "We've tended to say, drop another bomb via a drone and put out a headline that 'we killed Abu Bag of Doughnuts' and it makes us all feel good for 24 hours," Flynn said . "And you know what? It doesn't matter. It just made them a martyr, it just created a new reason to fight us even harder." That leaves open the possibility that a President Trump might eschew the "whack-a-mole" approach that has bedeviled the "war on terror" and instead go after the "mole nest" – if you will – the Saudi monarchy that has long financed Islamic extremists both through the fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam and by supplying money and weapons to jihadists dating back at least to the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s, the origin of modern Islamic terrorism. Traditional US politicians have recoiled from facing up to the hard reality that the Saudi monarchy is the real "terror central" because of Saudi Arabia's enormous riches and influence, which is now enhanced by its quiet alliance with Israel in their joint campaign against the so-called "Shiite crescent," from Iran through Syria to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Taking on this Saudi-Israel nexus has long been regarded as political suicide, given Israel's extraordinary lobbying power and Saudi Arabia's exceptional wealth. But Trump may be assembling a team that is "crazy" enough to take on that mission. So, while the fight over the future of US foreign policy is far from over – the neocons will surely flex their muscles at the major think tanks, on the op-ed pages and inside the halls of Congress – the Trump transition is showing some creativity in assembling a national security team that may go in a very different direction. Much will become apparent in Trump's choice of Secretary of State. If it's someone like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, or Rep. Gabbard or a libertarian from the Kochs' world, that would be bad news for the neocons. If it's someone like Romney, Giuliani, Bolton or Woolsey, then that will mean that President-elect Trump has blinked and the neocons can breathe a sigh of relief. Reprinted with permission from Consortiumnews.com . Related


At least 20 countries in the European Union will sign up to a new defense pact next week, promoted by France and Germany, to fund and develop joint military hardware in a show of unity following Britain s decision to quit the bloc. After years of spending cutbacks in Europe and a heavy reliance on the United States through the NATO alliance, France and Germany hope the accord, to be signed on Nov. 13 in Brussels, will tie nations into tighter defense collaboration covering troops and weapons. The Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, could be the biggest leap in EU defense policy in decades and may go some way to matching the bloc s economic and trade prowess with a more powerful military. But differences remain between Paris and Berlin over what countries legally bound by the pact should do, EU diplomats said. France wanted a core group of governments to bring money and military assets to PESCO as well as a willingness to intervene abroad. Germany has sought to broaden the pact to make it inclusive, which some experts say could make it less effective. This has to bring about a higher level of commitment if it is going to work, said a EU official, describing PESCO as a defense marriage . The EU already has plenty of forums for discussion, the official said. So far France, Germany, Italy, Spain and around 16 other EU countries have pledged to join the pact, which could formally be launched when EU leaders meet in December. Some other members, including Denmark, Portugal, Malta and Ireland, have yet to commit themselves publicly. But it was clear that Britain, which intends to leave the bloc following the Brexit referendum of June 2016, would not participate, officials said. Britain has long sought to block EU defense cooperation, fearing it could result in an EU army. French diplomats said the pact would have several areas where EU governments would agree to work together and pledge funds, including EU military operations, investment and acquiring defense capabilities together as a group. A German official said the initiative won momentum from French President Emmanuel Macron s call for a European intervention force in September and U.S. President Donald Trump s insistence that Europe do more for its security. Proposals for PESCO include work on a European medical command and a network of logistic hubs in Europe, creation of a crisis response center, and joint training of military officers. A key goal is to reduce the numbers of weapons systems and prevent duplication to save money and improve joint operations. It could also serve as an umbrella for projects such as a Franco-German initiative to design a new fighter jet, and existing bilateral military cooperation agreements, such as the close ties between Germany and the Netherlands. Efforts under the pact will be closely coordinated with the U.S.-led NATO alliance to ensure transparency and avoid any redundancies, the German official said. One area where NATO and EU officials see common ground is in the need for a military zone for free movement of troops and equipment, loosely based on the EU s passport-free travel Schengen zone. I welcome integration to the maximum extent practical. We obviously want to avoid duplication and maximize transparency, U.S. Air Force General Tod Wolters, NATO Allied Air Commander, told Reuters. Under the plans, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation would focus on collective defense, while PESCO would ensure a quicker and more efficient EU response to events like the 2014 Ebola crisis in Africa, the official said. This will not happen in competition with NATO, the German official said.


If there s one takeaway from Thursday, it s that Donald Trump is probably going to lay in bed in that bathrobe he doesn t own and cry himself to sleep for days. In yet another blow to Trump s ego and victory for the Constitution, a federal appeals court became the third in the nation to tell The Donald to take his Muslim ban and shove it up his big orange ass.Trump s DOJ lawyers tried everything from claiming that the ban, which blocked people from seven predominantly Muslim countries that have not been tied to a deadly terrorist attack within our borders since 9/11 from entering the United States, is necessary to protect our nation, to actually attempting to get the court to agree that President Asterisk s decisions are absolute and unreviewable by any court. The Supreme Court has made clear that the Government s authority and expertise in [such] matters do not automatically trump the Court s own obligation to secure the protection that the Constitution grants to individuals, even in times of war, the court said. There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy. Even though he had just been to court, Trump lashed out on Twitter with twelve schadenfreude-laden, ALLCAPS words: SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE! SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017Naturally, the Internet responded with joy upon hearing this amazing news because whenever Trump is sad, justice has won..@realDonaldTrump you just did see them in court Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump I'm afraid court already saw you, dear. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump are you tired of winning yet Matt Binder (@MattBinder) February 9, 2017@MattBinder @realDonaldTrump Just can't stop winning! Austin Braun (@AustinOnSocial) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Says the guy who goes to war w/ Nordstrom, Hamilton, Meryl Streep & SNL but can't acknowledge a terrorist attack in Quebec! Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 9, 2017"SEE YOU IN COURT!" @realDonaldTrump yells to the second highest court in the land. David G. McAfee (@DavidGMcAfee) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump The appeals court actually said the government had provided no evidence that the security of the nation WAS at stake. Jim Roberts (@nycjim) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump This is so embarrassing for you! President Bannon is going to be so mad! Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Trump thinks checks and balances are when his contractors check their bank accounts and see the balance at zero. Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump I'm wondering the same thing ?? pic.twitter.com/xXyl2R46Rg sam (@SamTheCobra) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump You sound like you're about to rage quit. eBaum's World (@ebaumsworld) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump You know who else did everything in their power to delegitimize the judiciary system? pic.twitter.com/TABwMPvuQk #TheResistance (@AynRandPaulRyan) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump didn't you justnever mind Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) February 9, 2017The Justice Department says it is considering its options in the wake of this very, very bad news for Trump and his Deplorables.This battle will likely end in the Supreme Court which means it is up to our elected officials to refuse to confirm any Trump nominee. Five justices would need to agree to reverse the 9th Circuit Court s decision and the empty spot Merrick Garland should be occupying leaves Trump in extreme danger of a tie, which would effectively uphold the lower court s decision.Today is a great day for America, but the battle is far from over. Resist.


A U.S. judge on Thursday said he wanted to decide quickly lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's decision to end a program that shielded from deportation children brought to the United States illegally by their parents. President Donald Trump this month decided to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, in March 2018. Since it was authorized in 2012 by President Barack Obama, the program has provided protection from deportation and the right to work legally to nearly 800,000 young people. Several states, organizations and individuals have filed lawsuits seeking to protect DACA recipients known as Dreamers. At a hearing in San Francisco federal court, U.S. District Judge William Alsup grouped four of those cases together, including a lawsuit filed by California's attorney general and six individual Dreamers. Legal briefs for many of the issues could be finished by December, he said. "I don't like the idea that we're fiddling while Rome burns and then suddenly the program is expired," Alsup said. The legal claims in all of the cases are similar: That the Trump administration did not follow proper administrative procedure in rescinding DACA, and that making enforcement promises to a group of people, only to revoke them, violates due process. The Trump administration has said it is ending DACA because Obama overstepped his constitutional authority when he bypassed Congress and created the DACA program unilaterally. Trump called on Congress to enact a law to protect DACA recipients and last week angered some of his fellow Republicans by negotiating with top congressional Democratic leaders on possible legislation. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump ran on a hardline immigration platform, promising to end DACA and strengthen border protections to increase jobs for U.S. workers. Dreamers with work permits that expire before March can apply to renew them for another two years if they do so before Oct. 5. The Department of Homeland Security might extend that date. In court on Thursday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the government still had not made a decision on the deadline. Shumate also said the Trump administration has not changed Obama-era restrictions about when a Dreamer's personal information can be shared with other agencies for immigration enforcement purposes.


The Pentagon is expected to submit to Congress on Tuesday President Barack Obama's long-awaited plan for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, setting up a battle with lawmakers who oppose his efforts. Obama, whose pledge to shut the facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba dates back to the start of his presidency in 2009, is seeking to make good on his promise before he leaves office next January. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the administration intended to meet Tuesday's deadline to present its detailed proposal for closing the facility. There are still 91 prisoners detained there. "We understand the deadline is tomorrow and it's our intent to meet it," Davis told reporters. U.S. officials have said the plan would call for sending to their homelands or third countries detainees who have been cleared for transfer, now numbering 35, and bringing remaining prisoners, possibly several dozen, to U.S. soil to be held in maximum-security prisons. Congress has banned such transfers to the United States since 2011. Another option that will be cited in the administration's blueprint will be the possibility of sending some prisoners overseas for prosecution and trial, one U.S. official said. The closure plan could also serve as a template for how to deal with future terrorism suspects captured in the fight against the Islamic State militant group. However, the document will not name the alternative U.S. prisons under consideration for housing detainees, U.S. officials said. The administration wants to avoid fueling any political outcry over specific sites during a U.S. presidential election year. Still, Pentagon officials have already surveyed a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, a military jail at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina. An effort will also be made to speed up parole-style reviews to determine whether more prisoners can be added to the group cleared for release, officials said. The plan will include costs for upgrading U.S. facilities and housing the inmates there, according to a source familiar with the matter. The White House last year rejected one Pentagon proposal as too expensive, sending it back for revisions. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress largely oppose proposals to move any of the prisoners to the United States. Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte said on Monday the Obama administration refused to "level with the American people regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of the detainees who remain at Guantanamo." White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated Obama's view of Guantanamo as a terrorist "recruiting tool" and urged lawmakers to look at the plan "with an open mind," although he expressed doubt about whether they would do so. The White House has left open the possibility that Obama might resort to executive powers to close the facility. The prison was opened in 2002 by former Republican President George W. Bush to house foreign terrorism suspects rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The United States quickly drew criticism from human rights activists and foreign governments over Guantanamo, where most prisoners have been held for more than a decade without trial.


Donald Trump is literally ordering the government to take two steps back for every step forward.Regulations protect the American people. There are regulations that give us clean water and clean air, regulations that keep workers safe at work with fair wages, regulations that prevent dangerous or poisonous products from being sold to consumers, regulations that keep our food safe, regulations that protect us from predatory banking, and regulations that protect endangered species. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. Without regulations, companies could pollute whenever and wherever they want. Our country would be a disaster. There s a reason why we have regulations.But Donald Trump promised during his first week to kill 75 percent of regulations. The regulations are going to be cut massively, he said during a meeting with corporate CEOs on his third full day in office last week.And now he is following through by signing an executive order that requires federal agencies to kill two existing regulations for every new one created and guts funding for new regulations for the entire year.According to Reuters,Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday that will require that for every new federal regulation proposed, two must be revoked, an administration official said.The order says federal agencies will propose rules they want to eliminate and the White House will review those decisions. The order sets a budget of $0 for new regulations in 2017 and the administration will set a regulation budget each year.Basically, Trump s cabinet could propose a useless regulation and then use it as an excuse to cut two crucial regulations like a food safety rule or rules that regulate pollution.While there surely are regulations that could be loosened to help small business owners, waging total war against regulations and mandating that two be repealed for every new one created is completely asinine and does nothing but hurt the American people and take the country backwards.Again, most regulations on the books were created for a reason and need to remain to protect the environment, our health, and our lives.This is not a game, but Donald Trump sure seems to think it is.


European Union leaders could hand Theresa May an olive branch in deadlocked Brexit negotiations next week by launching their own internal preparations for a transition to a new relationship with Britain. Draft conclusions submitted by summit chair Donald Tusk to the 27 other EU governments made final Brussels rejection of opening free trade talks now. But they also but gave the beleaguered British prime minister hope that they would do so in December and that, if she ups her offers on divorce terms, the EU will be ready to start talking almost right away. With nerves fraying and threats flying about walking out without a deal come the March 2019 deadline for departure, the pound took a knock when EU negotiator Michel Barnier said a new round of talks this week had ended in continued deadlock over a British refusal to clarify how much it will pay on leaving. But it rallied on word that, despite tough demands from EU governments on what they want from London, the Union is ready to talk about how to avoid a hard Brexit and to ease Britain out with less disruption probably by agreeing to keep it in the single market for a couple of years, diplomats say. The draft of conclusions which would be issued by leaders of the 27 next Friday, a day after meeting May in a full EU summit, still have to be agreed. Envoys, including from heavyweights Germany and France, objected last week to a suggestion from Barnier that the EU should start working on transition plans. But EU officials noted that Tusk, the European Council president, has sounded out most national leaders in recent days he briefed May by on his preparations on Thursday. A senior EU official closely involved in the negotiations said Brussels did not expect major changes to the summit text. A diplomat from one big country said only that the text would be discussed by national envoys in Brussels on Friday. The first version, seen by Reuters, confirms what Barnier and others have said this month: that there is not sufficient progress on agreeing three key elements of a withdrawal treaty for leaders to agree now to open the trade talks May wants. But in an effort to defuse accusations in Britain about EU intransigence, the leaders would welcome progress to date on their three key issues: the rights of 3 million EU citizens in Britain; protecting peace in Northern Ireland from the effect of a new border on the island; and Britain s outstanding payments. They would pledge to reassess things at their next summit in mid-December Barnier on Thursday spoke of making progress in the next two months. And in order not to waste time once they do decide to launch talks on a post-Brexit future, they would ask Barnier and their envoys to start preparing now for a transition albeit without actually starting talking to Britain about it. The European Council invites the Council (Article 50) together with the Union negotiator to start internal preparatory discussions, the draft read. Another EU official said that would avoid weeks of delay in launching a new phase by the new year which business leaders say is vital if they are to make informed investment decisions in 2018 for the time after Brexit. Without a good idea by early next year of what a transition period will look like, international businesses in Britain would start to vote with their feet and move operations to the continent for fear of a hard Brexit , some have warned. The uncertain grip May, who campaigned last year against Brexit, has over her party and hardliners demanding she resist EU demands and be ready to walk out with no deal, has left Europeans unsure of where negotiations may lead. The gesture to May reflects some willingness to help reinforce her in office. Barnier and his British counterpart, Brexit Secretary David Davis, told reporters there had been some progress this week on citizens rights and the Irish border question. Davis renewed his call for EU leaders to give a green light to trade talks next week but that has long been a forlorn hope. Barnier made clear that despite new momentum from May s concessions in a speech at Florence last month, British proposals still failed the sufficient progress test, notably on tens of billions of euros the EU says London owes. May said Britain would ensure the other 27 countries did not lose out financially from Brexit in the current EU budget period to 2020 and would honor commitments but Barnier said London was failing to spell out just what it was ready to pay. There was no negotiation on this, but we did have technical discussions which were useful, he said. We are, therefore, at a deadlock on this question. This is extremely worrying for European taxpayers and those who benefit from EU policies. Nonetheless, he offered hope: I am still convinced that, with political will, decisive progress is within reach in the coming two months. With David Davis, we will organize several negotiating meetings between now and the end of the year. May herself said there had been good progress and welcomed Barnier s talk of further progress over the coming weeks .


President Donald Trump likes to call most of the press fake so when the White House is called disorganized or unprofessional, it is easy for him to discount the criticism. FOX News, however, is one of his favorite outlets.This week it is hard to call the White House anything but a hot mess. The communications office, for instance, does not seem to have any idea of what s going on. But even Chris Wallace, the host of FOX News Sunday, is saying any problems in the White House communications office should be laid at the feet of the president.Wallace said, One of the problems has been the disarray at the White House communications shop. The president has been blaming that on them, but the fact is it should be blamed on him, because he didn t seem to trust them enough to give them advanced notice. There have been reports that despite not having given his staff the information they needed to develop a coherent and comprehensive strategy, Trump was up watching the television coverage of Comey s firing, yelling at the set and blaming the people around him for not defending the decision.,Wallace said that he has been trying to book a White House spokesperson all week to go on his Sunday show and has had no success. He said, They still haven t given us anybody. We can t even reach anybody they re not available, they re not answering the phone.


The United States and Cuba have concluded a "substantive" second round of talks on multibillion-dollar claims against one another in Washington and agreed to hold more regular meetings on the matter, a State Department Official said on Friday. The former Cold War foes had a first meeting outlining their respective claims in December in Havana as part of a deepening detente. The issue is one of the key and complex obstacles to normalization of relations between the two countries. "The second meeting was more substantive both in exploring more details about claims that need to be resolved but also in reviewing the practices of both countries in solving claims," the State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "Both sides agreed they would have more regular meetings." There is no set date yet for the next meeting, which will place in Havana, in accordance with bilateral protocol, the official said. Cuba wants at least $121 billion in reparations for economic damages caused by the U.S. trade embargo and at least $181 billion for "human damages." The United States has awarded its firms and individuals $1.9 billion worth of claims against Cuba for factories, farms, homes and other assets that were nationalized on the island after Fidel Castro's rebels came to power in 1959. Those claims are now roughly worth $8 billion when including 6 percent annual interest. The Cuban government has reached settlements with other countries for expropriated assets but it cut off negotiations with the United States when bilateral relations soured in the 1960s. Many of the nationalized companies no longer exist and individual claims have been passed to heirs. The State Department official said the United States also is claiming $2.2 billion for court judgments outstanding against Cuba and hundreds of millions for former government mining interests on the island. Cuba's Foreign Ministry said in a statement the two countries had continued sharing information on their respective claims "with the aim of preparing the process of negotiation."


President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into law the funding bill passed by Congress that will keep the government operating until Dec. 9, the White House said.


WHAT do subscriptions to a newspaper, magazine or Netflix account have in common? Once you sign up, you expect to pay the same rate every month. Yet that's not the case at Amazon when you subscribe to its Subscribe Save program, which automatically refills orders for household staples like instant coffee, napkins or trash bags. Amazon's subscription program, which was introduced in 2007, lets consumers register to have their favorite consumables delivered regularly — monthly, for example — in exchange for a discount of at least 5 percent off each order. Buried in the company's terms and conditions is that the Subscribe Save discount is applied to the price of the item at the time that the order is placed. And on Amazon, prices change frequently — including sometimes rising. I learned this the hard way while reviewing an email summary of my Amazon subscriptions. A pack of lint rollers that I had subscribed to for more than two years recently jumped to $18. 04 a pack, up from $12. 44 since the last delivery a few months ago, or almost a 50 percent increase. A quick web search revealed other consumers were also surprised by price jumps for Subscribe Save items. One Amazon customer said he signed up for a $10 box of chewing gum and was charged $100 for the same product a month later. In Amazon's online forums, dozens of people posted about prices of Subscribe Save items fluctuating, with some calling the program a "bait and switch" subscription scheme. Amazon declined to comment. The company emails people 10 days before a recurring subscription delivery, when it informs customers of a new price of their item so they can change or skip the order. Any sticker shock, analysts said, may be the result of Amazon's complex pricing system coming into conflict with consumer expectations of a traditional subscription. Jared Wiesel, a partner at Revenue Analytics, a pricing and sales consulting firm, said of Amazon, "I think they've violated the psychological concept of a subscription with their customers in changing prices like this. When people think of a subscription, they think of locking in a set cadence of receiving a good. " Amazon, the top online retailer in the United States, has not said how many customers use Subscribe Save. Yet its program is prominent among a growing number of internet retailers that are finding success in sales models, such as Dollar Shave Club, the subscription razor company that recently sold for $1 billion to Unilever, or the Honest Company, which lets parents subscribe to baby products like diapers and wipes. Amazon's dynamic pricing system, in which it frequently adjusts item prices based on a sophisticated set of variables like supply and demand, time of day and prices offered by competitors, is the company's way of making it look as if you are always getting the best deal, Mr. Wiesel said. Prices of goods can also fall, of course. But even when prices decline, people need to beware because Amazon's pricing tends to fluctuate more widely and more frequently than at your local grocery store or Walmart, Mr. Wiesel added. In traditional retail, the major price changes typically happen during promotions, he said. To get a preliminary view into whether people can save — or not — with Amazon's program, I plugged prices of 50 featured Subscribe Save items into a spreadsheet and looked at their price histories over the previous six months. I compiled the results with the web tool Camel Camel Camel, an Amazon price tracker. Prices of most items, including dishwasher soap and toilet bowl cleaner, changed frequently. As often as weekly, prices rose, dipped and rose again like a roller coaster. In extreme cases, prices for items like instant coffee and napkins jumped between 90 and 170 percent. (Prices below reflect subscription discounts.) • Folgers Coffee, 30. Tub In June: $6. 64 In August: $12. 50 This week: $7. 59 • Vanity Fair Napkins In May: $7. 94 In June and July: $21. 46 This week: $15. 36 ______ Only five of the Subscribe Save items held steady. • Sparkle Paper Towels Over six months: $25. 99 • Death Wish Coffee Over six months: $19. 99 After the service's 5 percent discount, the paper towels cost $24. 69 and the coffee cost $18. 99. Not bad. ______ In the end, whether you save money depends on when your subscription order is placed and what items you buy. The downside of buying through Amazon's subscription program is the lack of predictability, Mr. Wiesel said. "I've never seen this type of price fluctuation in a store," he added. Some highlights over the last six months (with subscription discounts applied): • GermGuardian Air Purifier Replacement Filter Low: $18. 06 High: $33. 24 • Honeywell Humidifier Replacement Filter Low: $4. 67 High: $11. 27 • Lysol Disinfecting Wipes ( ) Low: $8. 95 High: $17. 91 ______ Mr. Wiesel noted that it would be tough for Amazon to revise its subscription program to offer items at fixed rates. A majority of sales on Amazon are purchases, and dynamic pricing is fundamental to how the company operates. If, for example, Subscribe Save prices remained static, those customers could miss out when prices go down for purchases of the same products. If you truly want to save money on Amazon, one approach is to sign up for price alerts on Camel Camel Camel to get an email when a price drops to a desired amount. When that happens, manually reorder — yes, that's an extra step — your instant coffee, toilet cleaner or lint rollers. Sucharita an analyst for Forrester Research who follows Amazon, said the retailer was probably pushing prices up to test how loyal customers are to products and how much more they are willing to pay for them. Yet the sharp price changes on Subscribe Save items caught her by surprise. "It doesn't seem as as Amazon typically is," she said. "That's what's unusual. "


Email  According to Twitter page Jil al HorriyavalTanweer, @jil_ht, the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has claimed in his official twitter account that Turkey is pursuing a revival of Ottoman Empire by deploying military forces to Syria and Iraq, while Saudi Arabia is remaining silent against the disintegration and plundering of the Arab countries by the Erdogan regime, only because of strategic issues and its own hostility toward Bashar Assad.


Donald Trump stroked his own ego again and got humiliated for it.During a very creepy Cabinet meeting where each member took their turn praising Trump on national television, Trump bragged about the number of bills he has signed, claiming to have signed more legislation than any other president in history except Franklin Roosevelt. I will say that never has there been a president with few exceptions, in the case of FDR he had a major Depression to handle who s passed more legislation, who s done more things than what we ve done, Trump boasted.Technically, it s sort of true. Actually, Roosevelt and Truman signed more. But the kind of legislation Trump has signed thus far is insignificant. For instance, most of the bills include creating memorials, designating buildings, appointing members to the Smithsonian board, encouraging Americans to display the flag on a certain day, and a bunch of other pithy bills that really are pathetic when you consider all the major pieces of legislation other presidents signed after they took office.But that didn t stop Trump from blowing his own horn again on Twitter Friday morning.I ve helped pass and signed 38 Legislative Bills, mostly with no Democratic support, and gotten rid of massive amounts of regulations. Nice! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2017Again, Trump has no major legislative achievements, and it should be pointed out that President Obama signed plenty of bills, including major pieces of legislation without Republican support. Unlike Trump, Obama didn t whine about it.Predictably, and rightfully so, Twitter users were quick to bash Trump for bragging about his pathetic record.Literally every single major legislative effort you ve had has FAILED DRAMATICALLY! Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) June 23, 2017Except that the regulations that this administration got rid of were essential to protecting the environment and checking Wall St excesses. Anirvan Ghosh (@anirvanghosh) June 23, 2017Praising yourself = sad & desperate Ending self praise with Nice! = high fiving yourself after masturbating Pep Rosenfeld (@peprosenfeld) June 23, 2017No Major Bills, despite having the House and Senate on your side. NOT NICE! Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) June 23, 2017you ve mostly just removed laws that protect living creatures. Congratulations, fuck face. https://t.co/OjgRh2V7Id. kim (@kim) June 23, 2017Congrats as well, 4 signing bill that now allows hibernating bears in Alaska 2 be shot by hunters, as well as tracked by aircraft & killed!! Pam W ?????? (@dallaspamela53) June 23, 2017You are a seriously needy lil bitch Rogue CPI (@RogueCPI) June 23, 2017It takes a real small man to feel the need to brag. Thanks for the daily reminder of how weak and fragile you are #LamePOTUS Scott Greenstone (@sgreenstonenj) June 23, 2017Donald Trump is a pathetic old man who should be getting impeached and thrown in prison for the rest of his miserable life. Instead, Republicans are letting him disgrace the presidency and embarrass the United States on a daily basis. 2020 can t get here soon enough.Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images


The Clinton campaign reacted with yet another ad featuring Trump's own words this time disparaging veterans and their families. The anti-Trump Priorities USA SuperPAC went even further with a new spot that shows Trump saying, "I love war." Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway responded by saying the bizarre comment was taken out of context but the full quote, which he gave last November at a wild Fort Dodge, Iowa, rally (the same one where he called Ben Carson a child molester), is even worse than what it sounds like in the ad: Trump has never been in the service, although he has said,"I always felt I was in the military" because of his education at a military-themed boarding school and he believes he has "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military." That comment "I'm good at war" says everything about Trump as he demonstrated last night at the town hall forum that he is indeed unfit to be president of the United States. There were many aspects of his performance that had people gasping at the mere idea of this man in a position of real power, not the least of which was his comment that President Barack Obama compares unfavorably to Russian President Vladimir Putin who "has an 85 percent approval rating" and is "very much a leader" because he has "strong control over his country." But it was around the question of ISIS and the Middle East where he really showed his true colors. He was upset that Hillary Clinton had earlier claimed that he had lied when he said he had been against the Iraq War and defended himself by pointing to an Esquire magazine article from 2004 — which doesn't really help since the war began in the spring of 2003. The fact-checkers have declared his pants are on fire numerous times on this but he just keeps saying it. Last night he also made a passing reference to someone "asking him about Iraq" 14 years ago, and you may be surprised to learn that at that same crazy Iowa rally he told the crowd that a delegation from the White House came to him to ask his opinion and he advised not to go in because it would destabilize the region. To the best of my knowledge this claim has never been validated. It's possible, of course, this was the Bush administration. But let's just say that it's as likely as Trump's witnessing thousands of New Jersey Muslims cheering after 9/11. You'll knock the hell out of one and the other one is going to come and take over the other. You don't have to be a genius to figure this out even though I am a genius. And by the way, I'm more militaristic than anybody in this room. I'm going to make our military so strong, so powerful. Everyone seems to think that Trump has "pivoted" from his position that he could not reveal his plan to defeat ISIS to his announcement today that he would give the generals 30 days from the inauguration to come up with one. But that's wrong. Trump's secret plan is not so secret. At that same rally last fall, Trump spoke about it plainly: "I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me. . . . I would bomb the shit out of 'em. . . . I'd blow up the pipes. I'd blow up the — I'd blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left. And you know what, you get Exxon to come in there and in two months — you ever see these guys how good they are? The great oil companies? They'll rebuild that sucker brand-new. It'll be beautiful. And I'd bring it, and I'd take the oil." At the forum, he reiterated this belief that America should "take the oil" because he thinks this will make ISIS surrender and has taken to saying "to the victor goes the spoils" apparently unaware that this is a considered a war crime. He has said in the past it would require a permanent force to protect the oil but that it wouldn't take much. Trump said that under Obama and Clinton's leadership "the generals have been reduced to rubble" and "reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country." He sounded as if he planned to fire some of them, which isn't actually something the president can do. As he is wont to do he brought up his favorite, General George Patton, saying that he's "spinning in his grave" over the state of affairs in the military. The good news is that he didn't bring up General Black Jack Pershing and endorse mass executions with bullets dipped in pigs' blood as he often does on the trail. He maintained that he still believes in his own plan for Iraq and says he won't necessarily follow the generals' advice. So, the GOP nominee for commander in chief tells people that he's "good at war," "has had a lot of wars of his own" and "loves war in a certain way" despite never having been in the military. He also believes he's a "genius" who is "more militaristic" than anyone in the room. His plan to defeat ISIS is to blow up the Iraqi oil wells and have Exxon come in and rebuild them. And he believes that half the military leadership are fools and thinks he can just fire the ones he doesn't like. But there's nothing delusional about any of that so there's no need to concern yourselves that the poll numbers are tightening. If he happens to pull this off, what could go wrong?