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Trump Administration Tag

One of the mainstays of then-candidate Trump's campaign rallies was the attendees' "lock her up" chant, a reaction to his campaign promise to "jail crooked Hillary" Clinton. In late November of last year, President Trump shocked many of his supporters by announcing that he would not pursue charges against Hillary Clinton.  Instead, he said he was focused on bringing the country together and helping Hillary "heal." The Guardian reported at the time:
The president-elect told the New York Times on Tuesday that it would be “divisive” to pursue criminal investigations into the former secretary of state over her use of a private email server or conflicts of interest involving her foundation. His conciliatory tone provoked a backlash from some conservatives. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said, according to a tweet by Times journalist Mike Grynbaum. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”

President Trump's eraser and Twitter feed seem to be more effective that Obama's pen and phone. In the last days of his insipid administration, the former president created the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah with a stroke of his pen, claiming thousands of square acres of land for the federal government. Now, President Trump indicates that he is going to trim back the size of the land grab.
President Trump on Friday told Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah that he will shrink the size of Bears Ears National Monument, a 1.35 million-acre piece of land former President Obama designated as a national monument just before leaving office.

The remaining files related to the JFK assassination are required to be released on October 26th.  As the date approaches, the media began musing about how likely President Trump is to block their release, at least in part. On Friday, Politico published an article entitled, "Trump Likely to Block Release of Some JFK Files."  It is standard procedure to hold back and/or redact information that is potentially damaging to national security, but Politico makes it sound like some dastardly Trumpian plot to hide information from the public. The article was sourced by "anonymous White House officials" and was quickly picked up by other outlets and made the social media rounds.  Why a source needs to be anonymous to state the obvious is anyone's guess.

In the midst of a completely unnecessary controversy over President Trump's phone calls to the widows of fallen soldiers, Natasha De Alencar, released video of a phone call she received from President Trump.

President Donald Trump's administration has finally waived the Jones Act, which will allow foreign ships to bring aid to hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico. The Jones Act has been enforced since its inception in 1920. It states that any goods transported by water into U.S. ports must come in on ships made in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, have American crews.

If you work in the government, DO NOT USE YOUR PRIVATE EMAIL ACCOUNT TO CONDUCT ANY BUSINESS. Why is this so hard to grasp?! After spending years of griping at failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for using a private email server and account for business as secretary of state, we have now learned that President Donald Trump's senior advisor (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have used a private email account to conduct official White House business.

When Trump claimed months ago that his campaign was wiretapped by Obama, liberals in media scoffed. The very idea that Obama or anyone on his team would be part of anything so untoward was unthinkable.

On Joy Reid's MSNBC show this morning, panelist Sarah Kendzior claimed that "you still have actual Nazis" in the Trump White House. That came after her assertion that "this is still a white supremacist house." Kendzior didn't identify the "actual Nazis" by name.

According to a New York Times report, Trump told White House aides he's cutting his Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon loose. Though the report indicates Bannon is getting the boot, there's as of yet any confirmation of when he'll make his final White House exit and yet another source claims Bannon submitted his resignation more than a week ago.

Since the election there has been an unprecedented attempt to unwind the election result. Events have accelerated on several fronts lately with attempts from outside and within to paralyze the Trump administration. What started as a collective media freakout on Election Night 2016 quickly progressed to an unprecedented attempt to intimidate Electors into changing their votes. Some Democrats announced, even before Trump took office, plans to impeach him, and Democrat politicians fed media-driven Russia collusion conspiracy theories for which they knew there was no evidence. Chuck Schumer, for example, used the alleged fact of Donald Trump being under FBI investigation as an argument against confirming Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even though Schumer (but not the public) knew from intelligence briefings that Trump was not personally under investigation.

While the battle over Obamacare has raged, it has taken attention away from the ongoing opioid crisis. Now, Trump's own commission on opioids has asked him to declare a national emergency.

Reince Priebus, Trump's Chief of Staff, no longer has that position. He is being replaced by General (and Secretary of Homeland Security) John Kelly. Trump announced the move in a series of tweets:

If you're wondering why President Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos needs millions of dollars in security, this is one of the reasons. DeVos is trying to make improvements in her department but is being predictably cast as someone who doesn't care about civil rights. Erica L. Green writes at the New York Times:
Education Dept. Says It Will Scale Back Civil Rights Investigations The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

As we approach the 150 day mark for President Donald Trump's first term, I thought in might be useful to have a retrospective post about how the American press has presented his record, outside of Twitter, Russia and Comey hearings...and highlight some of his underreported victories. Professor Jacobson so noted, the news cycle is essentially over for the assassination attempt on the Republican congressional baseball team. To be sure, if the Democratic congressional representatives had been targeted (and the assassin found with a list of Democratic targets in his pocket), this would have been "top of the fold" for many more weeks to come.