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Trump Administration Tag

President Donald Trump has decided not to release White House visitor records, breaking from former President Barack Obama. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Under President Donald Trump’s policy, formally announced on Friday, the U.S. Secret Service will maintain visitor logs only for certain executive branch offices, including the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Those logs won’t be regularly released, but rather will be subject to requests under federal open records laws.

According to a report by the Washington Post, the FBI obtained a FISA warrant last summer to monitor former Trump adviser, Carter Page. WaPo's report is based on information provided by anonymous sources not at liberty to discuss the investigation. The FBI and DOJ believed Page may have been acting as a foreign agent. So far, this is the closest public evidence that there may have been Trump camp/Russian collaboration, but even at that, obtaining a warrant is not indicative of collusion, simply a suspicion of.

A recent revamp of Trump's National Security Council cut former Breitbart News Chief Executive Steve Bannon's role entirely. Bannon's role as a National Security Advisor was controversial from the get-go.

The election of President Donald Trump continues to have a profound influence on this country in nearly every area of government. The upcoming census of the American people is a good example of a Trump-era change that is going mostly unnoticed. In 2012, Legal Insurrection reported that the Obama administration was proposing sexual orientation/gender identity questions for the 2020 census.  Such questions have never been included in any U. S. Census.

The Environmental Protection Agency's new chief is now on-the-record as declaring that the life-sustaining gas, carbon dioxide, is not responsible for "global warming".
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Trump's first joint session congressional address was well received by viewers. A CNN poll found 78% of respondents viewed Trump's speech favorably. Political pundits from across the spectrum are weighing in and reactions didn't fall cleanly down the party line, either.

Take Van Jones for example:

The White House has drawn a significant amount of criticism for poor communication. In an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump took responsibility for the communication problems.
Trump, in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” specifically cited his immigration policy, and said that perhaps the rollout of his plan to keep out and remove criminal illegals hadn’t been communicated effectively. “And maybe that’s my fault,” Trump said. He later awarded himself a grade of a “C” or “C-plus” on communicating, straightforwardly saying, “My messaging isn’t good.” He clarified that he would give himself an "A" for achievement and "A-plus" for effort.

The story goes a little something like this: Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was taking a photo of Presidents of traditionally black colleges during their meeting with President Trump. To do so, she was awkwardly positioned on the couch. She leaned back to check the photos she'd taken, feet on the couch. The AFP snapped a photo. And then the internet lost its mind. The photo:

During the Obama era, many taxpayers had to trim back discretionary expenses for luxury items, like gym memberships. However, some of our government bureaucrats enjoyed those perks...using our tax dollars. A detailed audit of expenditures for 2016 revealed that the EPA's money management was polluted by improper purchases.
Environmental Protection Agency employees used their government purchase cards to spend $14,985 on fitness memberships, according to an audit by the inspector general of the agency. With the goal of assessing the risk of illegal, improper, and erroneous purchases made on the EPA's purchase card, the auditors evaluated 18 transactions totaling $48,345 and found that none of them complied with any of the internal controls that were tested.

Offering no explanation, the White House excluded CNN, Buzzfeed, the LA Times, the New York Times, and several foreign outlets from its informal press gaggle Friday. Fox and other network outlets were permitted attendance, as were larger right-learning outlets like the Washington Times and One America News Network. Naturally, excluded outlets are less than thrilled. Jake Tapper is one of the better offerings from the cable news world, but he's wrong that the White House stonewalling overtly hostile press is "Un-American."

The Trump administration has notified the Supreme Court, in a pending case, that it is withdrawing the transgender bathroom mandate ordered by the Obama administration. The notice is here. (full embed at bottom of post.) Bryan analyzed the issues in the Supreme Court case last October, On the Basis of Sex: Supreme Court should reject transgender teen’s bathroom challenge. Buzzfeed, which is in favor of the mandate, reports on the latest development:

Every year, President Obama filled out a NCAA bracket on ESPN. President Trump will not continue his predecessor's tradition.