US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9876

On February 09 2018 23:01 GreenHorizons wrote:


How many ended up voting for it?

I wonder because then it would seem Democrats would need a majority plus that to ever actually be able to protect DACA folks.

On February 09 2018 23:03 farvacola wrote:
Many Republicans have signaled a willingness to protect Dreamers, which is why the majority leaders in both chambers have fought so hard to keep a vote stifled.

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.

Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from the conservative Fox News Channel. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings, noting that presidents have historically sought to receive the information in different ways.

Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement that “any notion that President Trump is not fully engaged in the PDB or does not read the briefing materials is pure fiction and is clearly not based on firsthand knowledge of the process.”

He added that Trump’s routine sessions with senior intelligence advisers “demonstrate his interest in and appreciation for the value of the intelligence provided. In fact, President Trump engages for significantly longer periods than I understand many previous presidents have done.”

The PDB, which has been described as a newspaper with the smallest circulation in the world, is drawn from material provided by U.S. spies, satellites and surveillance technology, as well as news sources and foreign intelligence agencies.

Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary for President Barack Obama, said Trump could miss important context and nuance if he is relying solely on an oral briefing. The arrangement also increases pressure on the president’s national security team, which cannot entirely replace a well-informed commander in chief, he said.

“Something will be missed,” Panetta said. “If for some reason his instincts on what should be done are not backed up by the intelligence because he hasn’t taken the time to read that intel, it increases the risk that he will make a mistake.”

“You can have the smartest people around you — in the end it still comes down to his decision,” he added.

The top-secret intelligence report, which dates in its current form to the Johnson administration, is made up of individual “articles” written by career analysts, mostly from the CIA. The PDB is so tightly controlled that intelligence officials maintain a log to record when the briefers provide a copy of the document to a principal and when they retrieve it, several officials said.

Mark Lowenthal, a career intelligence officer who served as a CIA assistant director from 2002 to 2005, said Trump does not have to read the PDB if he is getting an extensive oral briefing. He warned, however, that a short briefing on a few select items would leave the president ill-equipped for major decisions over the long term.

“Then he’s really not getting a full intelligence briefing,” Lowenthal said. “You need to get immersed in a story over its entire course. You can’t just jump into an issue and come up to speed on the actors and the implications. The odds are pretty good that something will arise later on for which he has no intelligence basis for helping him work through it.”

The document, while traditionally lengthy and dense, contains key insights that can create a cumulative body of knowledge — and foreshadow looming threats, intelligence professionals said.

President George W. Bush faced a political firestorm over how closely his administration was paying attention to the PDB after it was discovered that a month before the 9/11 attacks, his briefing book had included a warning that Osama bin Laden was “determined” to attack U.S. targets using airplanes.

In the current administration, versions of the president’s written intelligence briefing are provided to at least a dozen top officials, including national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to people familiar with the dissemination.

Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m.

One senior White House official described the Oval Office briefing as a distilled version of the sessions that senior administration officials receive earlier in the day. CIA Director Mike Pompeo usually attends the session, as does Coats.

During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events — such as visits by foreign leaders — and longer-term strategic issues.

“The president asks hard questions,” he said in public remarks last month. “He’s deeply engaged. We'll have a rambunctious back-and-forth, all aimed at making sure we’re delivering him the truth as best we understand it.”

Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials.

The president asks “edge” questions, said one senior administration official, meaning that he pushes his staff to question long-held assumptions about U.S. interests in the world.

Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

Trump has at times demonstrated a deep distrust of the intelligence community. He has accused Obama-era intelligence chiefs of rooting against his election and exaggerating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to delegitimize his presidency.

The Washington Post reported last year that intelligence officials in some cases have included Russia-related intelligence only in the president’s daily written assessment, steering clear of it in the oral briefing in order not to upset Trump.

The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon. The historical record contains no references to him having read the document, although Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a copy each day, according to David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets.”

“It is not unprecedented for someone to get only an oral briefing of the PDB,” Priess said. “But it is the exception rather than the rule. And a rare exception.”

The intelligence community prides itself on tailoring the briefing document and the oral briefing to each president’s style. Obama preferred to received the PDB on a secure iPad to review before asking questions of his briefers.

President George W. Bush typically read the PDB first thing in the morning, with his briefer present to review the highlights and answer questions, according to former officials who briefed him.

Neither Obama nor Bush reviewed the briefing book every day, and at times they skipped a session, especially when traveling

President Ronald Reagan read the PDB every day but chose not to have a briefing from a CIA officer, said John Poindexter, who served as Reagan’s national security adviser. Reagan often discussed the briefing document in morning Oval Office meetings with his top advisers, Poindexter said.

Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents.

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

During the transition, the CIA offered to give Trump the same daily intelligence briefing that Obama received, a tradition for presidents-elect. But Trump declined a daily update, opting for less frequent briefings.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person,” Trump said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview in December 2016. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years. I don’t need that.”

At the time, Obama warned it was never wise to skip insights from intelligence professionals.

“If you’re not getting their perspective — their detailed perspective — then you are flying blind,” he said in an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

During the first year of Trump’s presidency, the format of his intelligence briefings changed.

In the early days, he received the traditional briefing sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m., according to his publicly released schedules. Within a few months, his intelligence advisers began augmenting the sessions with maps, charts, pictures and videos, as well as “killer graphics,” as Pompeo put it at the time.

“That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo told The Post in May.

[How President Trump consumes — or does not consume — top-secret intelligence]

The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.

The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall — or anything else on his mind, two people familiar with the briefings said.

On such days, there would only be a few minutes left — and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss, one senior U.S. official said.

“He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information, current and former officials said.

California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter-protesters and sought the prosecution of activists with “anti-racist” beliefs, court documents show.

The records, which also showed officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizer’s identity, were included in a court briefing from three anti-fascist activists who were charged with felonies after protesting at a Sacramento rally. The defendants were urging a judge to dismiss their case and accused California police and prosecutors of a “cover-up and collusion with the fascists”.

Defense lawyers said the case at the state capital offers the latest example of US law enforcement appearing to align with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups while targeting anti-fascist activists and Donald Trump protesters after violent clashes.

“It is shocking and really angering to see the level of collusion and the amount to which the police covered up for the Nazis,” said Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley teacher and anti-fascist organizer charged with assault and rioting after participating in the June 2016 Sacramento rally, where she said she was stabbed and bludgeoned in the head. “The people who were victimized by the Nazis were then victimized by the police and the district attorneys.”

Steve Grippi, chief deputy district attorney prosecuting the case in Sacramento, vehemently denied the claims of bias in an email to the Guardian, alleging that anti-fascist stabbing victims have been uncooperative and noting that his office has filed charges against one member of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), the neo-Nazi group that organized the rally.

Some California highway patrol (CHP) investigation records, however, raise questions about the police’s investigative tactics and communication with the TWP.

Felarca’s attorneys obtained numerous examples of CHP officers working directly with the TWP, often treating the white nationalist group as victims and the anti-fascists as suspects.

The TWP is “intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations” and “advocates for racially pure nations”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its leaders have praised Trump, and the group claimed to bring more than 100 people to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, where a counter-protester was killed.

In one phone call with Doug McCormack, identified by police as the TWP affiliate who acquired the permit for the Sacramento rally, CHP investigator Donovan Ayres warned him that police might have to release his name in response to a public records requests. The officer said he would try to protect McCormack.

“I’m gonna suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something until this gets resolved,” Ayres told McCormack, adding that he didn’t know who had requested records of the permit and noting, “If I did, I would tell you.”

Ayres’s reports noted that McCormack was armed at the rally with a knife.

The officer’s write-up about an African American anti-fascist activist included a photo of him at the hospital after the rally and noted that he had been stabbed in the abdomen, chest and hand.

Ayres, however, treated the protester like a suspect in the investigation. The police investigator recommended the man be charged with 11 offenses, including disturbing the peace, conspiracy, assault, unlawful assembly and wearing a mask to evade police.

As evidence, Ayres provided Facebook photos of the man holding up his fist. The officer wrote that the man’s “Black Power salute” and his “support for anti-racist activism” demonstrated his “intent and motivation to violate the civil rights” of the neo-Nazi group. He was ultimately not charged.

Ayres’s report also noted Felarca’s political activism in great detail, referencing her activism on behalf of students of color and women’s rights protests.

“This is a textbook case of a political witch-hunt and selective prosecution,” Shanta Driver, one of Felarca’s attorneys, said in an interview.

Officers also worked with TWP member Derik Punneo to try to identify anti-fascist activists, recordings revealed. Officers interviewed Punneo in jail after he was arrested for an unrelated domestic violence charge. Audio recordings captured investigators saying they brought photos to show him, hoping he could help them identify anti-fascist activists.

The officers said, “We’re pretty much going after them,” and assured him: “We’re looking at you as a victim.”

Ayres’s report noted that Punneo was armed with a knife at the neo-Nazi rally and that one stabbing victim told officers he believed Punneo was responsible. Using video footage, Ayres also noted that Punneo was “in the vicinity” of another victim at the time he was injured, but the officer said the evidence ultimately wasn’t clear.

Punneo and McCormack, who could not be reached for comment, were not charged. Ayres’s report included images and names of three other TWP-affiliated men who he said were armed with knives, but who also have faced no charges.

The CHP declined to comment.

In a response filed on Thursday, prosecutors said “every assertion” in the motion to dismiss is “inaccurate or fabricated” and accused Felarca’s lawyers of using the filing to “make a political statement”. The response also repeatedly blamed the stabbing victims for ignoring the district attorney’s inquiries: “Despite the fact that we have not gained the cooperation of these victims, the investigation to hold their attackers responsible continues forward.”

Prosecutors also said the charges were based on video evidence and argued that “no one is beneath the protection of the law, no matter how repugnant his or her rhetoric or misguided his or her ideals”.

Allegations of police bias and collusion with neo-Nazis have emerged in similar cases across the US. Last year, US prosecutors targeting anti-Trump protesters in Washington DC relied on video evidence from a far-right group with a record of deceptive tactics.

At an Oregon “alt-right” event, police allowed a member of a rightwing militia-style group to help officers arrest an anti-fascist activist.

Police in Charlottesville were widely accused of standing by as Nazis attacked protesters, and a black man who was badly beaten by white supremacists was later charged with a felony.

Sam Menefee-Libey, an activist who advocated for protesters charged for Inauguration Day rallies last year, said the government has repeatedly gone to great lengths to target anti-fascists: “We have patterns of acknowledged and unacknowledged overlaps between the interest of ultra-right nationalist organizations and the police and prosecutors’ offices.”

On February 10 2018 00:40 Plansix wrote:
https://twitter.com/ChrisMegerian/status/961983630116573185

Foxnews does not know how people qualify for the Olympics.

On February 10 2018 00:40 Plansix wrote:
https://twitter.com/ChrisMegerian/status/961983630116573185

Foxnews does not know how people qualify for the Olympics.

On February 10 2018 00:47 Logo wrote:


Wow you can almost hear the wind whooshing over the author's head just by reading the article.

On February 10 2018 00:52 Plansix wrote:

An embarrassing number of minorities qualified the US Team and it’s a problem he needs to talk about. It was a perfect meritocracy right up until “those people” started making the teams.

On February 10 2018 00:51 Sadist wrote:




I dont know much about the fox article but theres more to the diversity angle than just this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/trying-to-make-team-usa-look-more-like-america/2018/02/02/422ca13a-04fe-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.b0735b51b80a


Wapo ran an article a week ago or so saying the us olympic contingency has a goal to be more diverse. Im wondering if this is where the fox news bit came from.

Im a firm believer that its in a nations best interest to expand the talent pool to get the best available talent to succeed. But, if you read the article and the bits about scorecards it sounds kind of like a quota system. Anything like that does not belong in athletic competition with the best in the world. Giving people equal opportunity to create a bigger talent pool is great and is to the betterment of the US team. If it ever moves into the area where a person is selected to the teams for any other reason than results that is completely wrong imo.

On February 10 2018 00:52 Plansix wrote:

An embarrassing number of minorities qualified the US Team and it’s a problem he needs to talk about. It was a perfect meritocracy right up until “those people” started making the teams.

On February 10 2018 01:18 Plansix wrote:
Diversity has been less of a problem for the summer Olympics because the sports are generally less expensive across the board. From my reading on the topic, it seems the Olympic governors were focused on making sure less wealthy athletes could afford equipment and travel to competitions. And this has been a 4 year project. Does anyone really have a problem with the governors focusing on removing anything external that would prevent a minority athlete from competing in the 4 years leading up the Olympics?

On February 10 2018 01:18 Plansix wrote:
Diversity has been less of a problem for the summer Olympics because the sports are generally less expensive across the board. From my reading on the topic, it seems the Olympic governors were focused on making sure less wealthy athletes could afford equipment and travel to competitions. And this has been a 4 year project. Does anyone really have a problem with the governors focusing on removing anything external that would prevent a minority athlete from competing in the 4 years leading up the Olympics?

On February 10 2018 01:18 Plansix wrote:
Diversity has been less of a problem for the summer Olympics because the sports are generally less expensive across the board. From my reading on the topic, it seems the Olympic governors were focused on making sure less wealthy athletes could afford equipment and travel to competitions. And this has been a 4 year project. Does anyone really have a problem with the governors focusing on removing anything external that would prevent a minority athlete from competing in the 4 years leading up the Olympics?

On February 10 2018 01:23 Logo wrote:


Well what I got from that article is there's no problem as long as they are the best and win. Any minority that's only as good as the average (US) athlete needs to get the hell out.

On February 10 2018 01:26 IyMoon wrote:


I am going to go out on a limb and say no US at the Olympics is only as good as the average US athlete. Feel free to watch for one though, and if they do suck point it out and we can talk about it more