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Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that it would be "very unpopular" if congressional Republicans did away with the independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) introduced legislation in February to eliminate the CFPB. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) is preparing legislation that would strip the CFPB of its independent-agency status and would allow the president to be able to fire the agency's head at will.
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Trump said on Tuesday that he is planning a "major elimination" of Dodd-Frank regulations but would keep some of them.

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President Trump’s call for suggestions to reduce the regulatory burden facing manufacturers has turned up a number of ideas from industry groups – many targeting the EPA.

A large batch of the 175 comments the federal government has received target the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Labor Department.

Repealing Obama-era rules that aim to protect the air, water and workers were popular suggestions from industry groups, according to the Washington Post.

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Scientists say they have successfully carried out an initial test flight for an improved version of a nuclear bomb that has been in the U.S. arsenal for decades, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is wasting little time undoing Obama-era regulations.
... Here are five regulations or policies he's working to roll back.
1. Net neutrality
Pai has been meeting with industry representatives in recent days to lay out his plan to roll back the rules. The details still aren't public, but would reportedly involve Pai no longer treating internet services providers as public utilities. In exchange, broadband companies would voluntarily include net neutrality principles in their terms of service with customers.

2. Business data regulations

In the much nearer future, the FCC chairman is looking to deregulate the business data service (BDS) market — an area former Democratic FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler also tried to reform.

3. Broadband subsidies

Pai was quick to take on the FCC's Lifeline program, which provides broadband subsidies to low-income households.

4. Media ownership limits
On Thursday, FCC commissioners will also be voting on a proposal to undo an Obama-era change to media ownership rules, which made it harder for major TV broadcasters to buy up local stations.
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Critics say it means more media consolidation and less diversity in news outlets.


5. Television box reforms

Obama FCC Chair Wheeler had proposed reforming the set-top box market, allowing consumers to buy them from third parties and breaking what critics call a cable company monopoly.

One of Pai’s first actions as chairman was to withdraw the proposal, prompting an angry response from his predecessor.

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A privacy group is suing the IRS for not disclosing President Trump's tax returns.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Saturday, as rallies around the country were set to take place calling on Trump to release his tax returns.

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What worked for the president on the campaign trail is now becoming his greatest foreign-policy weakness....

Reversals and shifts are far from unprecedented. New administrations often adjust their policies to deal with the complex realities of international affairs or with changing tides in domestic politics. But few of these have openly sung the praises of unpredictability or contradicted themselves with such abandon as the Trump administration. The president and his supporters argue that having a reputation for being unpredictable will make others think twice before messing with the United States.

But unpredictability isn’t a strength. For a great power such as America, it’s a recipe for instability, confusion, and self-inflicted harm to U.S. interests abroad.

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As 'strategic patience' over the North's nuclear program is bumped by a more aggressive US posture, conflict has become more of a possibility – and it likely would not be a short and sharp one.

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On Feb. 17, Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who had lived in the United States since he was 9, was deported from the border city of Calexico, Calif., after being questioned by a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer....

Mr. Montes had left his wallet in a friend's car so could not show identification or proof of his DACA status and was told by agents he could not go get them, the paper reported. ...

In response to a request for comment by Reuters, a CPB spokesman said in an emailed statement that Montes had been apprehended "after illegally entering the United States by climbing over the fence in downtown Calexico."

The spokesman also said that Montes' DACA status had expired in August 2015 and that he had been convicted of theft for which he received probation.

USA TODAY reported that Montes' attorneys provided a copy of his work authorization card that showed his DACA status was valid through 2018...

Trump allowed to remain in place the DACA protections Mr. Obama had granted to more than 750,000 undocumented immigrants, saying he felt sympathy for these young people who have limited ties to the countries of their birth.

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Second Teen Arrested for Setting Fire to Political Billboard in Princess Anne
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The Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office said that on Saturday, 19-year-old Joy M. Shuford, of Owings Mills, Md., voluntarily turned herself in for her involvement in the incident, which occurred just the day before. Shuford was taken into custody at the Princess Anne Police Department and subsequently charge with second-degree arson, four counts of second-degree malicious burning, six counts of second-degree malicious destruction of property, trespassing, obstruction and hindering, and the commission of a hate crime.

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Their alleged actions could land each Shuford and Perry 33 years in prison and/or more than $40,000 in fines, court documents state. The arson charge carries a 20-year jail term and/or a $30,000 fine. The race and religion harassment charge has a three-year sentence and a $5,000 fine. Penalties for the remaining 11 associated offenses range between 60 days and 18 months incarceration.

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday denied that the Trump administration misled the public when the president said last week that a U.S. aircraft carrier was heading toward the Sea of Japan.... The Navy announced on April 9 that its Carl Vinson Strike Group would skip a regularly scheduled visit to Australia and head toward the western Pacific Ocean, a move the White House later said was meant as a deterrent to North Korea's recent provocations.

...But a Navy photograph taken April 15 shows the strike force in the Sunda Strait, an area off the coast of Indonesia and thousands of miles from North Korea, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
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“Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a radio interview Wednesday the miscommunication was "troubling."
"It certainly shows a breakdown in communications that is troubling because the president is commander in chief and [Defense] Secretary [James] Mattis apparently, according to press reports ... told him that this carrier and the destroyers were headed toward North Korea as a show of force when, in fact, they were headed in the completely opposite direction to Australia.

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Spicer denied the White House had misled the public and blamed the Pentagon for any confusion.

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President Trump on Thursday will sign a directive calling for an investigation into whether foreign-made steel imports are harming national security, Reuters reported late Wednesday.

The memo Trump will sign at the White House cites a law allowing the president to impose restrictions on imports for national security reasons, the report said. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross launched the probe late Wednesday.

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Three companies that make and market organophosphate pesticides have asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scrap the findings of research showing harm to animal species from their products.

Lawyers for Dow Chemical Co., whose CEO, Andrew Liveris, sits on President Trump’s manufacturing council, joined two other companies in the request last week to the EPA and two other agencies assisting in the process, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The letters dated April 13 characterize the federal research as fundamentally flawed, and ask the Trump administration to “set aside” the results that could lead to large-scale restrictions in the use of the pesticides.

The pesticides at issue — chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion — were found to harm about 1,800 endangered or threatened species, according to the thousands of pages of research gathered over four years.

EPA head Scott Pruitt last month reversed course from the Obama administration by refusing to ban the use of chlorpyrifos on plants meant for human consumption

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Now two Republican bills aimed at destroying the scientific basis for EPA’s decisions have passed the House and await Senate action. If passed and signed into law, their persistent destructive impact on intelligent environmental regulation would overshadow EPA’s budget cuts and the EPA Administrator’s unwillingness to accept the facts about climate change

One bill, the misnamed The Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017 (HONEST Act), would bar EPA from considering in its regulatory activities any peer-reviewed scientific work unless raw data are fully available to anyone who seeks to repeat the study....

Another major problem with the HONEST Act is that it would forcibly discard existing peer-reviewed scientific research which has been confirmed in multiple studies by scientists who long ago threw out all of the trivial research details the HONEST Act would require for EPA’s regulatory considerations.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which priced out the predecessor to this bill as $250 million per year, almost half of EPA’s total research budget, now says that the costs will be relatively minimal because current EPA leadership has assured them that it would significantly reduce the number of studies that the agency relies on when issuing or proposing covered actions....

The companion bill would amend the rules governing EPA’s scientific advisory processes to increase industry participation while excluding knowledgeable independent scientists, such as the academic scientist who has successfully competed in a peer process for EPA grant funding. This exclusion would be for the duration of the grant and no new grants could be received for three years after serving in an advisory capacity

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The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) are advertising to donors that they will get invitations to events with congressional staff such as chiefs of staff, leadership staffers and committee staffers, the report said, citing documents it and the Center for Media and Democracy obtained.

Selling access to legislative staff could be in violation of ethics rules, which say campaigns can't use House and Senate resources in any way and that employees on Capitol Hill can't take part in fundraising as part of their official activities.

Fundraising activities by Capitol Hill employees need to be done as volunteer work.

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President Trump’s lawyers on Thursday argued that anti-Trump protesters infringed on his First Amendment right by expressing "dissenting views" at his campaign rallies.

According to a report by Politico, Trump's lawyers are asking a judge to halt an ongoing lawsuit against the president by maintaining that protesters "have no right" to voice opposing views during rallies.

Three protesters who were ejected from a March 2016 Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Ky., have sued, claiming that they were roughed up after Trump incited violence by shouting “get 'em out of here!” from the stage.

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In Zimbabwe, family planning aid has dramatically reduced maternal and infant mortality. Now, one group is scrambling to make up aid it will lose as the 'Mexico City' policy is reinstated – even though the group doesn't perform abortions in the country.

... earlier this year, President Trump revived a Reagan-era executive memorandum barring any US aid dollars from going to organizations that either “perform [or] actively promote abortion as a method of family planning,” even if those activities are funded from a different source. ...

... Ever since 1973, when a Congress bitterly divided over the newly-enacted Roe v. Wade decision passed the Helms Amendment, it has been illegal to spend US aid dollars on abortion itself. But as abortion continued its ascent as a defining social issue for both Democrats and Republicans in the 1980s, then-President Ronald Reagan's administration decided it needed to go further. So in 1984, in a nod to the religious right who were his core constituency, he signed the Mexico City Policy, in virtually all cases cutting off funding to organizations that did any abortion-related work.

... The prohibition was flipped off each time a Democrat took office (Clinton, Obama), then back on whenever a Republican entered the White House (Bush, Trump).

... Trump's version expands the policy to include not only groups accepting USAID money earmarked for family planning – some $600 million this year – but for organizations that accept American health aid for everything from HIV to child nutrition. That aid totals about $9.5 billion.

The results of past policy swings are significant and well documented – if counterintuitive. A study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 2011, for instance, found that women in African countries that received significant USAID funding were actually more than 2.5 times more likely to have an abortion during the administration of George W. Bush – when the Mexico City Policy was in place – than during that of Bill Clinton, when it was not.

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Two marches in D.C. this month will bring out scientists and other protesters who say the Trump administration’s policies sideline science’s role in public policy, undermining the science on climate change and other issues.

Organizers will host the March for Science on the National Mall on Saturday, followed by the People's Climate March the week after....

Activists have tried to pitch the March for Science as a non-partisan event, and Saturday’s demonstrators won’t demand specific policy outcomes beyond supporting science as a guide for public policy.

Next weekend’s climate march, on the other hand, will directly pressure policymakers to back away from the Trump administration’s energy proposals and work on tackling climate change. ...

Activists and Democrats have lambasted the Trump administration’s approach to science policy, from proposed deep spending cuts at key federal science agencies to its work undoing Obama-era climate change regulations and policies.

Trump’s first budget proposed large funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Energy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA’s Earth science budget.

Along the way, officials have begun the process of stripping away key climate policies from the Obama administration.

Those efforts have raised concerns from across the political spectrum, including among some Republicans.

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President Trump’s lawyers on Thursday argued that anti-Trump protesters infringed on his First Amendment right by expressing "dissenting views" at his campaign rallies.

According to a report by Politico, Trump's lawyers are asking a judge to halt an ongoing lawsuit against the president by maintaining that protesters "have no right" to voice opposing views during rallies.

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Rep. (R-Texas) said Monday that congressional efforts this week to fund the government could include appropriation for President Trump's proposed border wall.
Sessions, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, acknowledged that putting the wall in government-funding bill would likely nix all Democratic support.

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A group of 40 Democrats and Republicans said Monday that they would support a "clean" spending bill devoid of partisan policy riders in an effort avoid a government shutdown.

Members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus called for a spending bill that avoids a confrontation between the two parties before government funding runs out after Friday.
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Sticking points include funding for the border wall promised by President Trump and funding to reimburse ObamaCare insurers. Republicans are expected to need Democratic votes to pass the budget, setting the stage for a showdown.

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President Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday instructing the Department of the Interior to review the designations of national monuments by his predecessors, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
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The executive order is mainly geared toward reviewing former President Barack Obama’s designation of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in December, according to the Tribune.

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U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy has been removed by the Trump administration and replaced temporarily by his deputy, Rear Adm. Sylvia Trent-Adams.

....Murthy had nearly two years left on his four-year term as surgeon general. The news release said he was asked to resign, then relieved of his duties. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) criticized the dismissal in a news release, saying that Murthy “U.S. surgeons general are not supposed to be fired midterm. ...

James T. Currie, executive director of the Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. Public Health Service, a non profit that represents officers in the USPHS, said his group plans to campaign to persuade Trump to nominate a permanent surgeon general from within the ranks of the Public Health Service, which, he said, is required by federal law.

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How NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre became Trump's left-hand man

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With a search for the next Register of Copyrights currently underway, a bill introduced in Congress on March 23, 2017, would let President Donald Trump make that appointment, rather than Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden....

Although the position has no lawmaking authority, it does come with significant power to shape policy. The tech and media industry, in particular, is hotly debating the bill’s policy implications as Congress begins its long-awaited copyright reform process. Specifically, media business lobbyists favor the idea of a presidential appointee, as they had worried that Hayden might replace Pallante with someone more skeptical of copyright protections.

...However, critics vociferously argue that the appointment will be susceptible to special interests and funded agendas. Some also remain unclear why legislators are calling for the revision with such urgency, or why they are seeking to allot the executive branch expanded power in the copyright realm.

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The Copyright Office is ... not... responsible for making or officially applying copyright law except in very narrow circumstances (like deciding whether a work qualifies for registration). Instead, the responsibility for setting the nation’s copyright policy rests with Congress.

In the past decade, however, the Copyright Office has played an increasingly central role in policymaking – and it has not been a neutral advocate. The Copyright Office has repeatedly put forward policy proposals and legal analyses that have tended to favor the interests of a particular segment of copyright owners (particularly major media and entertainment companies) over other constituencies. For example, one former Register famously stated, “[c]opyright is for the author first and the nation second.” Under her leadership, the Office supported the disastrous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). And last year, the Office worked closely and quietly with major entertainment companies to derail the FCC’s effort to improve competition and consumer choice in cable set-top boxes. The Office also pushed through an unpopular rule change that puts many small website owners at risk of losing access to copyright law’s safe harbors for intermediaries. ...

The Register has gone from being a neutral expert to a political player. In theory, the bill would help mitigate this effect by making this Register more accountable to the public – after all, under the current regime the Register answers only to the Librarian of Congress. In practice, though, we fear it’s designed to do something else: allow powerful incumbent interests to use their lobbying power to control this increasingly politicized office.

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Maine’s national monument will be attacked on two fronts if, as anticipated, President Donald Trump orders a review of monument designations later this week, and Gov. Paul LePage testifies before Congress on May 1 against executive orders that create monuments without state approval.

LePage will fly to Washington, D.C. to testify before a House Committee on Natural Resources subcommittee next week in opposition to national monument designations created by presidential order, the governor confirmed Monday during a press conference in Augusta.

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The White House is taking steps that could open up new areas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to offshore oil and gas drilling, according to multiple individuals briefed on the proposal....

Environmental groups are sure to challenge both initiatives in court, and the effort to rescind the protections Obama put in place under OSCLA could prove difficult to defend because a president has not reversed such a move in the past. But presidents have wide latitude to revise the Interior Department’s five-year leasing plan, and have done so in the past, so it is unclear how any challenge to that element of the order would fare in court.

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President Trump wants his administration to draft a tax plan that would cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The Journal, citing "people familiar with the directive," reported that Trump told his staff last week that he wants to be able to sell a large tax cut to the public and is less concerned about the proposal adding to the deficit.
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The corporate tax rate is currently 35 percent. Trump also proposed a 15 percent rate during his presidential campaign, while the House Republicans' tax plan proposes lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.

aninkling wrote:

I assumed the argument is along the lines that this was a private event so they didn't have to allow free speech?

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House Republicans are circulating the text of an amendment to their ObamaCare replacement bill that they believe could bring many conservatives on board.

According to legislative text of the amendment obtained by The Hill, the measure would allow states to apply for waivers to repeal one of ObamaCare’s core protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
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Specifically, the amendment from Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) allows states to apply for a waiver from ObamaCare’s “community rating,” requirement. If that were repealed, insurers would be allowed to charge people with pre-existing conditions much higher premiums due to their illnesses, putting coverage out of reach for some.

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White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney threatened to cut off crucial ObamaCare payments as soon as next month on a call with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Tuesday night, according to an aide familiar with the discussion.

Canceling the payments to insurers, known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), would cause chaos in the insurance market. The payments are the subject of ongoing litigation, with a judge ruling them unconstitutional last year because Congress had not appropriated the money.

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If Mulvaney follows through on his comments, then that would raise the pressure on Congress to appropriate the payments so that they are not canceled, as the administration is threatening.

Top congressional Republicans, though, are resisting funding ObamaCare payments in the spending bill, leading to a standoff.

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The leaders of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday said the former national security adviser might have broken the law by accepting payments from Russia and Turkey, and later by misleading the government about them...

Flynn’s troubles deepened Tuesday, when House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) gave a damning review of Pentagon documents they viewed that morning...

According to Chaffetz and Cummings, the documents showed that Flynn did not disclose a paid speaking engagement in Russia when he applied to renew his security clearance, nor did he seek permission to accept the funds. As a retired military officer, Flynn is prohibited under the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution from accepting payment from a foreign government without advance permission from both the secretary of State and the secretary of the Army. ..


The panel is also seeking a wide swath of documents from the White House related to what Flynn reported when he was vetted to become national security adviser. But the White House is refusing to provide that information, calling the request “extraordinary.”
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The refusal to cooperate has left unanswered questions about the extent to which the White House was aware of Flynn’s activities.

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Canada has become the surprise No. 1 target in President Trump’s push to get tough on trade.

Trump fired the opening shots of a potential trade war this week by slapping a tariff of up to 24 percent on Canadian softwood lumber imports. He also threatened action to protect U.S. dairy farmers, which could complicate any future talk of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The moves escalated a spat between neighbors that typically have one of the friendliest cross-border relationships in the world...

Trump and his advisers on Tuesday downplayed concerns about a broader trade war with Canada. “No,” the president told reporters when asked if he fears one. “They have a tremendous surplus with the United States. Whenever they have a surplus, I have no fear.” ...

Despite the massive goods exchange between the United States and Canada, the relationship is relatively balanced. The U.S. only had a $15 billion trade deficit with Canada in 2015, according to the U.S. trade representative...

Experts say the moves could signal a tougher renegotiation of NAFTA than Trump signaled back in February.
“These irritants could have a negative affect on the NAFTA negotiations,” said Dawson. “The biggest concern is the agreement is ripped up entirely. It could really destabilize how all of us do business.”

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The White House on Tuesday tore into a San Francisco judge's ruling blocking enforcement of President Trump's sanctuary cities order, saying the judge "unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation."

A judge on Tuesday granted preliminary injunctions to block Trump’s January order to withhold federal funds from cities that refuse to comply with federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws.

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The Trump administration recently announced that it will not permit the nonpartisan American Bar Association to play its traditional role of evaluating judicial candidates before they are nominated....

For over half a century, the ABA has played a key role in the federal judicial nomination process. The ABA’s 15-person screening committee contacts dozens of lawyers and judges about a potential nominee’s qualifications,focusing on three critical factors: competence, integrity, and temperament. They do not assess a candidate’s politics or judicial philosophy. After the ABA review is complete, candidates are assigned one of three ratings: Well Qualified, Qualified, and Not Qualified. The rating is not made public unless the candidate is nominated...

President Bush was the first president since Eisenhower to take the ABA out of the pre-nomination process because his administration disagreed with the ABA’s policy positions, which have nothing to do with the judicial screening committee. While the vast majority of Bush judges received a passing grade, seven were rated Not Qualified. But that information didn’t come out until four to six weeks after the nominations were made ... As a result, the Senate confirmed four of the seven Bush judges rated Not Qualified.

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I have lived most of my adult life during the Cold War, and, throughout, I never lost sight of one overwhelming reality — at any time, the Cold War could turn hot, resulting in the extinction of our civilization. Now, inexplicably, we are recreating many of the conditions of the Cold War. In fact, I believe that, today, the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is actually greater than it was during the Cold War...

In 1979, I personally experienced one of the false alarms in the U.S., and it changed forever my way of thinking about nuclear dangers. I was awoken at 3 a.m. by the watch officer at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) saying that the computer was showing 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on the way from the Soviet Union to the United States.We were spared a disaster because the watch officer correctly concluded that the computer was giving a false reading — as it turns out, due to human error.

But what if that false alarm had occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis? In that context, the watch officer surely would have passed the alarm on to the president, who, after being awoken at 3 a.m., would have had less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch our ICBMs before they were destroyed in their silos.

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A State Department website has removed a blog post about President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort following criticism over ethical concerns.....

The blog, initially posted on ShareAmerica, a State Department platform used for sharing what it describes as "compelling stories," detailed the history of Trump’s “Winter White House.”
It immediately led to concerns that the U.S. government was promoting Trump's private resort.

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The blog, posted on April 5, details the history of the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and notes that the founder willed the estate to the U.S. government in 1973. Founder Marjorie Merriweather Post "spared no expense" when constructing the resort in 1927, it continues, and she intended it to be used by U.S. presidents to "entertain visiting foreign dignitaries."It also says President Trump is "belatedly fulfilling the dream of Mar-a-Lago’s original owner and designer" by using the resort to host foreign leaders like China's Xi Jinping.
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The web page does not make clear, however, that the federal government returned the resort to Post's estate or that Trump purchased the resort in 1985. Trump's critics have raised questions since his inauguration about conflicts of interest that could benefit his business holdings while he's in office.

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The Trump administration is weighing an executive order on withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), according to a source familiar with the plans.

The measure is in draft form and has been submitted to the White House staff secretary for the final stages of review, the source said. The order could be unveiled later this week or early next week, and changes could be made during the review process.
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Under NAFTA, any parties are allowed to leave six months after providing written notice to the other countries.

...The order was drafted by senior adviser Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro, head of the newly formed White House Trade Council, the source said. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and chief counselor Stephen Bannon provided input. All are part of a cadre of White House aides who have advocated a tougher approach on trade.

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To counter the manifold economic and military threats the United States faces, Navarro recommends a sweeping revision of U.S. foreign policy. He wants high tariffs, the repudiation of trade pacts and, above all, a massive military buildup against China. One of Navarro’s aspirations is to beef up military ties with Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of China