“Blackwater founder Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos, met with a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin in early January in what The Washington Post reports was an apparent effort to create a back channel line of communications between Moscow and the incoming Trump administration. The meeting, on the Seychelles islands, reportedly occurred less than two weeks before President Trump’s inauguration.” More.
Month: April 2017
Workers Endured Long Hours, Low Pay at Chinese Factory Used by Ivanka Trump’s Clothing-Maker
“Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday.” More.
Study Finds Fracking Is Strongly Related to Increased Infant Mortality
“A new study of Pennsylvania counties published this week in the Journal of Environmental Protection shows for the first time that contamination from fracking kills babies. Results showed a statistically significant 29% excess risk of dying age 0-28 days in the ten heavily fracked counties of Pennsylvania during the four-year period following the development of fracking gas wells. Over the same period, the State rate declined by 2%. Conclusion: ‘About 50 more babies died in these 10 counties than would have been predicted if the rate had been the same over the period as all of Pennsylvania, where the incidence rate fell over the same period.'” More.
Trump Is Slashing Programs Linking Climate Change to U.S. National Security
“President Donald Trump, with nearly all the government’s climate change work in his crosshairs, is poised to dramatically scale back environmental security programs — perhaps eliminating many entirely — through dramatic budget cuts. Many of these programs help cities cope with water emergencies. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, one microbiologist interviewed by ABC News sampled floodwaters in New Orleans and found bacteria linked to sewage at 45,000 times the level considered safe for swimming. Seven years later, Hurricane Sandy inundated East Coast water treatment plants to the point of overflow, releasing a total of 10.9 billion gallons of sewage into waterways and streets along the mid-Atlantic coast. In places like Camden, New Jersey, an economically depressed, mostly black and Latino community with an outdated sewer system, the risk of contaminated water is more routine: Sewage flows into the streets amid hard rains.” More.
Evaluating Trump’s First 100 Days — On His Own Terms
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Specter of Illegitimacy Haunts Trump’s First 100 Days
“Donald Trump narrowly won his party’s nomination despite the clear misgivings of his party’s professional class, which viewed him as erratic, uninformed, and dangerous. He won the presidency despite losing by an unprecedented three million votes nationwide, with the benefit of extraordinary interventions by the FBI director and Russian intelligence to help criminalize and discredit his opponent. All these things add up to a crisis of legitimacy. And yet, rather than confronting the crisis of legitimacy hovering over them, all the actions Trump and his governing partners have taken over their first 100 days have deepened it.” More.
Trump-O-Meter: Tracking Trump’s Campaign Promises
Politifact is tracking the status of Trump’s campaign promises as of the 100 Day mark. More.
Trump’s Dangerous Expansion of Executive War Powers
“For decades, Congress has relinquished its constitutional role in declaring war. But Trump is taking it to new extremes.” More.
Manafort Firm Received Ukraine Ledger Payout
“Last August, a handwritten ledger surfaced in Ukraine with dollar amounts and dates next to the name of Paul Manafort, who was then Donald Trump’s campaign chairman. Ukrainian investigators called it evidence of off-the-books payments from a pro-Russian political party — and part of a larger pattern of corruption under the country’s former president. Manafort, who worked for the party as an international political consultant, has publicly questioned the ledger’s authenticity.” More.
Playing the Long Game: Before Trump Job, Manafort Worked to Aid Putin
“Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,” The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates. Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.” More.