Category: Policies

Trump Administration Threatens Alaska After GOP Senator’s Healthcare Votes

The Trump administration is reportedly warning of possible repercussions for Alaska after Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) votes on healthcare.

On Wednesday, both of the senators from Alaska got a call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said Zinke’s message was “troubling.”

“I’m not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop,” Sullivan said.

The Trump administration is reportedly warning of possible repercussions for Alaska after Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) votes on healthcare.

On Wednesday, both of the senators from Alaska got a call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said Zinke’s message was “troubling.”

“I’m not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan also said he tried to “push back on behalf of all Alaskans.”

“We’re facing some difficult times and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the policies that Secretary Zinke and the president have been talking about with regard to our economy. But the message was pretty clear,” Sullivan added.

Murkowski on Tuesday joined senate Democrats in voting against a procedural measure to begin debate on healthcare legislation.

Murkowski also voted against a key proposal repealing and replacing ObamaCare later in the day.

Trump on Wednesday targeted Murkowski after her votes.

“Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday,” Trump tweeted. “Too bad!”

Murkowski said Wednesday she is in her position to govern and legislate. She said she didn’t think everyday should be about “campaigning” and “winning elections.”

[The Hill]

Reality

Threatening Murkowski, who is the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee which oversees his department was a complete amateur move by Zinke. In response Murkowski indefinitely postponed a vote to confirm six of Donald Trump’s most needed nominations to his department.

Donald Trump Endorses Police Brutality in Speech to Cops

President Donald Trump received applause on Friday when he endorsed police brutality while delivering a speech to law enforcement officers on Long Island, New York.

The president suggested that officers should hit suspects’ heads on the doors of their police cars.

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, and I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,’” Trump said.

“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head, I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’” he added.

His remarks received significant applause.

Trump also made the dubious claim that laws were “horrendously stacked” against police officers and said he wants to change those laws.

“For years and years, [laws have] been made to protect the criminal,” Trump said. “Totally protect the criminal, not the officers. You do something wrong, you’re in more jeopardy than they are. These laws are stacked against you. We’re changing those laws.”

In his speech, Trump also said that police officers in many parts of the country couldn’t do their jobs because they had a “pathetic mayor” or a mayor “who doesn’t know what’s going on.” Those comments also received a lengthy applause.

“It’s sad, it’s sad. You look at what’s happening, and it’s sad,” Trump said. “We’re going to support you like you’ve never been supported before.”

Trump also spoke about violence in Chicago, which was a consistent theme of his speeches throughout the campaign and is a topic he has continued to reference during his presidency. Trump recalled speaking to an “impressive” and “rough cookie” police officer from Chicago, and said the officer had told him he could straighten out the city’s violence problem in a “couple of days” if he was given the authority.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump may not be getting along these days, but the two are on the same page when it comes to policing. Sessions has had the Justice Department pull back from “pattern or practice” investigations that look into widespread constitutional abuses in police departments.

Zeke Johnson, senior director of programs at Amnesty International USA, said Trump’s “inflammatory and hateful speech will only escalate tensions between police and communities,” putting both officers and civilians at risk.

“Police cannot treat every community like an invading army, and encouraging violence by police is irresponsible and reprehensible,” he said.

Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s remarks were “unconscionable” and undermined the positive efforts of local law enforcement to build up community trust.

“The president of the United States, standing before an audience of law enforcement officials, actively encouraged police violence,” Gupta said. “We call on the president to immediately and unequivocally condemn police brutality. We can all respect our law enforcement officers without sanctioning unjust and illegal behavior.”

Robert Driscoll, a former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official under the President George W. Bush administration, was also critical.

[Huffington Post]

 

Scaramucci Asks FBI to Investigate Priebus For “Leaking” a Public Disclosure Form

In baffling tweet on Wednesday night, White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci appeared to accuse Chief of Staff Reince Priebus of leaking his financial disclosure form.

https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/890401606893809664

The tweet came after a Politico report revealed Scaramucci will still benefit from his hedge fund, SkyBridge Capital, while at the White House. Along with his accusation, Scaramucci vowed to have the FBI and DOJ (two entities his principal, Donald Trump, has repeatedly berated) investigate what he described as a “felonious” leak. Scaramucci tagged @Reince45 in the post, which generated ample confusion until the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza clarified that the communications director did indeed mean he wants the FBI and DOJ to investigate Priebus over the matter.

The Department of Justice even chimed in, insisting it will look in to Scaramucci’s request:

Financial disclosure forms are public documents, and are eventually made available online via the White House website

[Raw Story]

Trump: Many Immigrants are ‘Animals’ Who ‘Slice and Dice Young, Beautiful Girls’

Donald Trump marked Tuesday with another campaign-style rally in Ohio, using his platform to grab praise from his supporters and return to the glory of his campaign. There were plenty of pro-Trump folks in attendance, with some anti-Trump protestors tossed into the mix, giving the entire event a nostalgic 2016 feel that’s bolstered by Trump once again taking aim at illegal immigrants.

Trump hasn’t resorted to this type of language in a while, but Tuesday night’s rally touted ICE raids that were “doing it rough” and not “in a politically correct fashion,” while referring to those being deported as violent gang members and “animals.” While data has shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes according to The New York Times and ICE Raids aren’t always targeting the worst of the worst, Trump’s comments would have you believe that they’re going block by block as they “liberate” cities from violent foreigners:

One by one, we are finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals, and killers. And we are sending them the hell back home where they came from. [applause]

And once they are gone, we will never let them back in, believe me. [applause]

The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people — these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people — will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. [applause]

And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife, because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.

There’s nobody to question this comments at the rally, sites like Shareblue point out that Trump’s rant was less about actually dealing with violent criminals and more about “building up the anger and suspicion” with his supporters. He’s campaigning six months into his presidency and shows no signs of stopping. He’s even gone back to saying he’s more presidential than any president before — setting aside an exception for Lincoln.

Being presidential clearly includes telling a crowd of Boy Scouts about your friend’s sex yacht. This is Trump’s America now.

[Uproxx]

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiuiPDqvkh8

The Justice Department Just Argued Against Gay Rights in a Major Federal Case

The US Justice Department on Wednesday argued in a major federal lawsuit that a 1964 civil rights law doesn’t protect gay workers from discrimination, thereby diverging from a separate, autonomous federal agency that had supported the gay plaintiff’s case.

The Trump administration’s filing is unusual in part because the Justice Department isn’t a party in the case, and the department doesn’t typically weigh in on private employment lawsuits.

But in an amicus brief filed at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers under Attorney General Jeff Sessions contend that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination, does not cover sexual orientation.

“The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination,” says the Justice Department’s brief. “It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”

The Justice Department also contends that Title VII only applies if men and women are treated unequally.

“The essential element of sex discrimination under Title VII is that employees of one sex must be treated worse than similarly situated employees of the other sex, and sexual orientation discrimination simply does not have that effect,” the brief says.

The case kicked off in 2010 when Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, filed suit against his employer in federal court in New York, alleging the company terminated him for his sexual orientation in violation of Title VII.

After a lower court ruled and the case was appealed, the 2nd Circuit invited outside parties to weigh in. Zarda v. Altitude Express is now before before a full panel of judges at the court.

Among Zarda’s boosters is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a largely autonomous federal agency that handles civil rights disputes in the workplace, which supported Zarda last month in its own court filing.

For several years, the EEOC has declared in federal court that Title VII bans anti-gay discrimination, saying it is based on sex stereotyping, and therefore discrimination on the basis of sex.

But the Justice Department argues in its latest brief, “the EEOC is not speaking for the United States and its position about the scope of Title VII is entitled to no deference beyond its power to persuade.”

The scope of Title VII has been disputed for years.

Under President Obama, the government argued Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also included gender identity — thereby barring discrimination against transgender workers. But the Obama administration never went as far to say the civil rights law also covered sexual orientation. It had in fact opposed the argument, claiming that its hands were tied by prior court precedent. Yet in 2016, the Obama administration arguably dialed back its opposition by not trying to dismiss a case brought on those grounds.

If Zarda’s argument were to prevail — despite his death in a base-jumping accident in 2014 — it would set new precedent in the circuit by overturning two cases from the 2000s.

Further, it would give momentum to the argument as a general matter, given that in April the 7th Circuit ruled in favor of a lesbian who made the same claim.

Under Sessions, the Justice Department has pushed back against the EEOC’s view and that court decision. “The theories advanced by the EEOC and the Seventh Circuit lack merit,” the brief on Wednesday said. “These theories are inconsistent with Congress’s clear ratification of the overwhelming judicial consensus that Title VII does not prohibit sexual orientation discrimination.”

Several LGBT activists had worried the Justice Department would unleash a more sweeping claim that gender-identity discrimination isn’t covered under the Title VII as well — but the brief doesn’t explicitly speak to that issue.

Earlier on Wednesday, President Trump announced he would end all transgender military service.

“On the day that will go down in history as Anti-LGBT Day comes one more gratuitous and extraordinary attack on LGBT people’s civil rights,” said a statement from James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project. “The Sessions-led Justice Department and the Trump administration are actively working to expose people to discrimination.”

“Fortunately, courts will decide whether the Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people, not an Attorney General and a White House that are hell-bent on playing politics with people’s lives,” he said.

[BuzzFeed]

Trump Says Transgender People Can’t Serve In Military

President Trump has announced that the government will not allow transgender people to serve in the U.S. military.

In a series of tweets on Wednesday morning, he wrote:

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow … Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

Transgender people already serve in the military. It’s not immediately clear how Trump intends to implement the ban, but the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it will defer enlistments by transgender applicants.

“Secretary [James] Mattis today approved a recommendation by the services to defer accessing transgender applicants into the military until Jan. 1, 2018,” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement. “The services will review their accession plans and provide input on the impact to the readiness and lethality of our forces.”

In June 2016, then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter lifted the ban on transgender service members.

As NPR’s Merrit Kennedy reported then, Carter said the key reason for the change was “that the Defense Department and the military need to avail ourselves of all talent possible in order to remain what we are now — the finest fighting force the world has ever known.”

The move was an acknowledgement of the transgender people already in the military. Carter said RAND researchers estimated that “about 25,000 people out of approximately 825,000 reserve service members are transgender, with the upper end of their range of estimates of around 7,000 in the active component and 4,000 in the reserves.”

Trump’s announcement will likely be seen as running counter to a tweet he posted in 2016, in which Trump thanked the LGBT community. “I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs,” he pledged.

The Human Rights Campaign immediately tweeted its disapproval of Trump’s announcement. “Threatening 15K currently serving troops who put their lives at risk is unpatriotic and dangerous,” the LGBTQ rights organization said.

[NPR]

“As a presidential candidate, President Trump said that he “will do everything” to protect LGBT communities from violence, during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.”

Scaramucci Threatens to ‘Fire Everybody’ to Stop White House Leaks

President Donald Trump’s newly appointed communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said Tuesday that he is prepared to “fire everybody” in the White House communications shop in order to put an end to embarrassing internal leaks.

The financier and longtime Trump surrogate is eager to shake up the communications shop, which has been dominated by former Republican National Committee staffers loyal to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a former RNC chairman.

Scaramucci confirmed to POLITICO early Tuesday that he planned to start by dismissing assistant press secretary Michael Short at a morning meeting, but that move was apparently delayed.

Short, who initially said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been informed of any decision, resigned Tuesday afternoon.

Short’s ouster is Scaramucci’s first warning shot to White House aides who have been perceived as disloyal to the president. In an echo of Trump’s not-so-subtle warning to Jeff Sessions about his status as attorney general, Scaramucci’s vow to “fire everybody” is a warning to staffers perceived as leakers.

“I’m going to fire everybody, that’s how I’m going to do it,” Scaramucci said to reporters outside of the White House on Tuesday. “You’re either going to stop leaking or you’re going to be fired.”

He claimed to have the full authority of the president to clean out the communications shop and put his own stamp on the team. A source close to Scaramucci said that he’s planning to bring in people from the corporate communications world in addition to conservative broadcast stars.

Scaramucci also told reporters outside the White House that it “upsets” him that Short would find out about any changes to his employment through the media.

“This is the problem with the leaking,” he said. “This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”

He has pledged to put a stop to the leaks that have flowed out of the White House, especially those that have come from the press operation.

Scaramucci earlier said to POLITICO that Short would be the first dismissal of many, if he’s not able to stop the leaks coming out of the communications and press shop.

“I’m committed to taking the comms shop down to Sarah [Huckabee Sanders] and me, if I can’t get the leaks to stop,” Scaramucci told POLITICO.

During his first day in the White House on Monday, Scaramucci met with current communications staffers and warned about leaks coming from the office. “I offered amnesty in the meeting, but that decision is above my rank,” Scaramucci added.

Short said he had not been involved in any leaks. “Allegations I ever leaked anything are demonstrably false,” Short said.

Short is expected to be the first in a wave of staffers closely aligned with Priebus to be shown the door.

He was closely aligned with press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned on Friday after Scaramucci was appointed to the communications role. Short was scorned by many of his colleagues for quitting the Trump campaign, only to rejoin as a White House staffer because of Priebus.

In a story often retold by campaign staffers, they arrived at Trump Tower one morning, months before the election, to see Short’s computer left open on his otherwise empty desk.

The next time he was seen by former campaign staffers was in January, on their first day in the White House, where some were stunned to learn that they were going to have to work alongside him or for some of the press assistants subordinate to him.

Short said he had been on a part-time assignment from the RNC and decided to return to Washington “to do my real job.” He added: “I never ceased working on behalf of the ticket.”

Scaramucci said in remarks to reporters Friday that he couldn’t guarantee who will remain in the press shop, aside from social media director Dan Scavino and communications strategist Hope Hicks, both longtime aides to Trump. He also named Sanders to succeed Spicer as press secretary.

Spicer was in the White House on Monday but spent most of the day alone in his office, according to people who were in the building.

[Politico]

Trump Accuses Ex-FBI Director Comey of ‘Crimes’ and Calls for Him to Be Investigated By a ‘Special Council’

President Donald Trump continued a Twitter flurry Saturday morning by accusing former FBI Director James Comey of “crimes” and demanding to know why Attorney General Jeff Sessions or a “special council” have not investigated him.

Starting bright and early Saturday morning, Trump has furiously tweeted — ten times in 2 hours — on a variety of subjects from Hillary Clinton to Obamacare.

“So many people are asking why isn’t the A.G. or Special Council [sic] looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?” Trump tweeted before defending his son, Donald Trump Jr. over his emails, writing: “My son Donald openly gave his e-mails to the media & authorities whereas Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted (& acid washed) her 33,000 e-mails!”

You can see those tweets and quite a few more below:

[Raw Story]

Reality

Donald Trump demanding investigations of his political rivals and those in law enforcement who investigated him screams that he is completely innocent.

Let’s step through each claim:

Donald Trump Jr. openly gave emails

Trump’s eldest son released the emails just minutes before The New York Times published a report detailing the contents of the emails, which show that Trump Jr. was told before the meeting that the information about Clinton was part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s presidential campaign.

Democrats are obstructionists

No, one of the parties has an idea for healthcare for this country, Democrats, and they passed it and it is called the Affordable Care Act. Republicans only want to take it away.

And just the previous week, ten Democrats put forth a plan to mend the ACA that did not involve removing 22 million Americans from healthcare coverage.

Republicans, on the other hand, made obstructionism their party identity for 8 years during the Obama Administration.

Hillary Clinton sold Russia Uranium

Clinton did not sell a uranium mine to Russia, she was Secretary of the State Department when they and, this is important, 9 total agencies signed-off on a sale of an energy company to a Canadian-based Russian subsidiary. Again, very important, she didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal.

Hillary Clinton acid washed 33,000 emails

You can’t “acid wash” emails, that’s not a thing.

Sessions Discussed Trump Campaign-Related Matters with Russian Ambassador, U.S. Intelligence Intercepts Show

Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.

One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he had no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.

Sessions has said repeatedly that he never discussed campaign-related issues with Russian officials and that it was only in his capacity as a U.S. senator that he met with Kislyak.

“I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said in March when he announced that he would recuse himself from matters relating to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the election and any connections to the Trump campaign.

Current and former U.S. officials said that that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations in two encounters during the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

The apparent discrepancy could pose new problems for Sessions as his position in the administration appears increasingly tenuous.

Trump, in an interview this week, expressed frustration with Sessions’s recusing himself from the Russia probe and indicated regret at making the lawmaker from Alabama the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Trump also faulted Sessions as giving “bad answers” during his confirmation hearing about his Russia contacts during the campaign.

Officials emphasized that the information contradicting Sessions comes from U.S. intelligence on Kislyak’s communications with the Kremlin, and they acknowledged that the Russian ambassador could have mischaracterized or exaggerated the nature of his interactions.

“Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me,” said a Justice Department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, in a statement. She reasserted that Sessions did not discuss interference in the election.

Russian and other foreign diplomats in Washington and elsewhere have been known, at times, to report false or misleading information to bolster their standing with their superiors or to confuse U.S. intelligence agencies.

But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak — whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently — was known for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.

Sessions removed himself from direct involvement in the Russia investigation after it was revealed in The Washington Post that he had met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016, contacts he failed to disclose during his confirmation hearing in January.

“I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said when asked whether anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with representatives of the Russian government.

He has since maintained that he misunderstood the scope of the question and that his meetings with Kislyak were strictly in his capacity as a U.S. senator. In a March appearance on Fox television, Sessions said, “I don’t recall any discussion of the campaign in any significant way.”

Sessions appeared to narrow that assertion further in extensive testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, saying that he “never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.”

But when pressed for details during that hearing, Sessions qualified many of his answers by saying that he could “not recall” or did not have “any recollection.”

[Washington Post]

Trump Officially Nominates Climate-Denying Conservative Talk Radio Host as USDA’s Top Scientist

Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign adviser and one-time conservative talk radio host, has no background in the hard sciences, nor any policy experience with food or agriculture. Still, that did not stop President Donald Trump from officially nominating Clovis to the position of the United States Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of research, education, and economics, the agency’s top science position.

In the past, the undersecretary of research, education, and economics has brought years of experience in science, public health, or food policy. Previous undersecretaries have been biochemists, plant physiologists, or food nutrition experts. The most recent undersecretary, Catherine Woteki, came to the position from Mars, Inc., where she helped manage the company’s scientific research on health, nutrition, and public safety.
Clovis, on the other hand, comes to the position after serving as national co-chair for the Trump campaign, which he joined in 2015. Before that, Clovis was a professor of economics at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. He has a doctorate in public administration, and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014.

“Dr. Clovis was one of the first people through the door at USDA in January and has become a trusted advisor and steady hand as we continue to work for the people of agriculture,” USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement on Wednesday. “He looks at every problem with a critical eye, relying on sound science and data, and will be the facilitator and integrator we need. Dr. Clovis has served this nation proudly since he was a very young man, and I am happy he is continuing to serve.”

He has served as the administration’s top USDA policy adviser since January, signing off on a memo sent to USDA scientists telling them to cease publishing “outward facing” documents, like press releases or fact sheets.

Clovis, like so many of the Trump administration’s top policy officials, does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2014, he told Iowa Public Radio that climate science is “junk science” and “not proven.” He also said in an interview with E&E News in October that the Trump administration would not prioritize climate change or climate science at the USDA — a sharp break from the Obama administration, which made a point of trying to better prepare farmers and the food system for imminent climate-fueled changes like droughts or heavier storms.

“Whether or not Clovis acknowledges climate change, it is happening, and agriculture has to deal with that,” Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, told ThinkProgress. “They have to come up with techniques to grow crops in tough weather conditions, and there are always research needs for how you grow crops in changing climate more efficiently with less resources.”

Clovis would not be the only senior official at USDA to question established climate science. Secretary Perdue called climate science “obviously disconnected from reality” and “a running joke among the public” in a 2014 op-ed published in the National Review.
As undersecretary, Clovis will be responsible for administering policies to ensure USDA’s scientists conform to “scientific integrity.” It’s unclear how Clovis will administer those programs, or whether he will specifically seek to undermine climate science, as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is doing with his “red team/blue team” initiative aimed at questioning mainstream climate science.

For Lovera, Clovis’ nomination simply underscores the Trump administration’s disdain for science, from the dismissal of dozens of EPA advisory board scientists to the deletion of climate information from government websites.

“It’s a sad continuation of that trend that we were seeing with EPA and science advisory boards, and shutting down different websites,” Lovera said. “It’s just another sad example of the Trump administration putting politics first, and inside USDA, the politics of Big Agriculture.”

[ThinkProgess]

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