Opposing Trump Admin, When Documents Matter

Well we have quite an army of Marxists and progressives to watch in the next two years and it will be a full time job.

There are names such as:

Tom Steyer, David Brock, Obama, George Soros, Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Van Jones, Gara LaMarche, CAIR, John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, Elizabeth Warren, Donald Sussman and Bernie Sanders. There are of course more as one name leads to others and thousands of associated progressive organizations. Don’t be fooled that your job as a ‘Constitutional Originalist’ and conservative is over, that is hardly the case. We have already seen their mission in action.

 

So, why all this as a warning system?

 

For the full document as crafted for meeting in November of 2016: Progressive Orgs vs Trump

For what David Brock has planned, it is called impeachment and the documents are here. Confidential David Brock.

 

As reported by the Huffington Post, the progressives are re-tooling and are in it for the long game.

Here are five key elements of the concerted effort we must undertake to stop President-elect Trump from wreaking havoc on our communities, while building the alternative economic vision and power we need to win in the future.

First, we must wage sustained collective action. Within 24 hours of Trump’s victory, thousands of protestors had taken to the streets. Their statement was powerful and immediate. And it should be clear to every progressive that the next four years will require sustained collective action—and, often, action that means putting our bodies on the line to defend ourselves and others. Social movements from the abolitionists to the suffragettes to the civil rights movement to the immigrant rights movement have time and again changed the course of American history. Now we are called to come together again to demonstrate the moral dimension of the imminent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, indigenous people, and more.

This collective action will, and should, be led primarily by those who are directly affected by the dangerous rhetoric and proposals of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. But it will also require solidarity and engagement from all progressives—when called upon to stand with, and sometimes get arrested with, our brothers and sisters, those with privileges like whiteness, US citizenship, maleness, and economic security must be willing to put ourselves on the line. Hashtag solidarity will not suffice—nor will simply coming to a protest every few months after a particularly horrific event. Progressives need to show up—in person, and with regularity.

Those with financial resources will also need to open their wallets to help support grassroots efforts—whether it be philanthropists writing checks or middle- and working-class people giving monthly contributions to organizations that are building strong memberships to wage strategic campaigns.

Mass action should also be channeled out of, and into, existing social movement organizations as much as possible. Spontaneous “movement moments” like this week are inspiring and important. But to be effective in the medium and long term, they must build engagement and membership in grassroots organizations that can sustain mass action.

Second, we will need expert legislative maneuvering. The scariest ideas of Donald Trump and his alt-right idea factory will quickly become legislative proposals. Progressives will need to ensure that their champions, as well as courageous moderates, are prepared to use every tool at their disposal to prevent these reckless bills from becoming law. Many are rightly pointing to the tool of the filibuster in the Senate, which will be a critical tool for blocking legislation that will put communities in danger. And surely, there is no Democratic figure more critical than Charles Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, right now. But there are myriad other parliamentary procedures at legislators’ disposal to slow down the legislative process—both to provide more time for public scrutiny and debate and to simply block dangerous ideas.

And progressive legislators and progressive organizations must use whatever openings they have to invite our communities into the process. This will, no doubt, include efforts to have constituents make phone calls and send emails to their legislators. But it needs to go further. Resistance on Capitol Hill must be rooted in the lived experiences of the people who Mr. Trump and his acolytes will attack. Progressive organizations and legislators must invite these people to be at the forefront of hearings and targeted actions.

And, where Republicans try to prevent these fora from emerging within the halls of Congress, progressives must create alternative fora outside formal committee hearings to elevate people’s stories. To re-frame the debate on issues like immigration from the toxic terms that Mr. Trump will seek to deploy, progressives must elevate the moving stories of our communities—and let our resistance emanate from there. Similarly, in response to the anti-worker agenda that is surely coming, progressives must put working-class and low-income people’s faces and experiences at the forefront of legislative resistance.
Third, progressives will need to flex our legal muscles and undertake aggressive litigation. The next four years will bring a torrent of attacks on civil liberties and basic rights that progressives hold dear. While mass action will be critical for changing the public conversation on policy debates and confronting lawmakers with the consequences of their votes, and legislative maneuvers (particularly in the Senate) will be critical for blocking the worst of Trump’s agenda, it will not be sufficient to prevent all of his bad ideas from becoming law.
Here, legal tools will be critical. Progressives must use all the tools at our disposal to challenge the legality of clearly unconstitutional proposals that will emerge from President-elect Trump’s White House, including the expansion of the surveillance and national security state that he will seek to deploy. Already, Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union has made this strategy clear, posting a statement titled, “If Donald Trump Implements His Proposed Policies, We’ll See Him in Court.” Other prominent progressive legal organizations are similarly girding themselves up for the fights ahead.
The legal path will, of course, be made more difficult by a Supreme Court that will almost certainly tilt conservative next year. But that does not make litigation less important. In recent years, progressives fought back successfully against the worst attempts by legislatures across the country to attack immigrants, women, and labor unions. Our side has some of the best legal minds in the country, and we need them now more than ever.
Fourth, progressives must play offense at the state and local level. We must avoid being on permanent defense. Particularly in states, cities, and counties controlled by Democrats, progressives must assert ourselves and show the promise of our ideals and the policies that stem from them. Part one of this strategy must be to protect those who are most vulnerable to the effects of Trump’s domestic policy agenda—immigrants, Muslims, women, and the poor. The litmus test of a truly progressive city, county, or state will be whether it develops a comprehensive strategy for protecting its people from an out-of-control immigration and law enforcement infrastructure and attacks on the social safety net that keeps millions of Americans alive.

But, to win the next decade, progressives must also articulate an alternative vision for our country. While we hold the line against an agenda framed as economic populism. This cannot be a Clintonian pitch to the “middle class,” which embraced much of neoliberal ideology and trusted technocrats to solve our economic problems. Instead, it must be rooted in a radical critique of power, a commitment to working-class and low-income people, and the dedication to use government as a vehicle for grassroots democracy.

In practice, that means policies that, for instance, rein in corporate power and the stranglehold of large corporations and the wealthy on our politics while empowering workers to assert their rights and police and criminal justice reform that protects the constitutional rights of all people while dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. And it also means bold policy experimentation that deepens democracy by inviting residents into new participatory spaces with real decision-making that incentivize engagement. In the next four years, our municipalities and states must be vibrant laboratories for democracy and spaces from which we can begin to imagine a more inclusive economy—one that prioritizes the rights and needs of working-class people and offers a strengthened safety net that protects us all.

Fifth, we must build grassroots political power. As we take to the streets and organize, progressives must also plot a path forward to channel all of the incredible grassroots spirit of resistance into actual political power building. Part of that will be achieved through the work of building larger bases of membership in grassroots organizations across the country—particularly those with political arms that can endorse and support candidates who share our values. But it must also include a concerted effort to build the ranks of truly progressive candidates and elected officials—and more progressive party institutions.

Some have reflected in recent days about the need for the Democratic Party to reinvent itself. Surely, the Democrats must learn that part of the enthusiasm gap that plagued the Clinton candidacy stemmed from the failure to articulate a vision that highlighted how our system has failed working people, how we must take on the role of big money, how we must invite people back to democracy at every level instead of relying on a neoliberal technocracy, and how black lives must be at the center of our politics.

Others are reflecting on the need to challenge the two-party system in this country. On this front, the best source of hope is the Working Families Party (WFP), which now operates across ten states and the District of Columbia and lent considerable grassroots muscle to the remarkable candidacy of Bernie Sanders. In states like New York, the WFP has identified, cultivated, and bolstered progressive stars running for office at every level of government—from town councilmembers to county legislators to the Mayor of our nation’s largest city. Growth in the geographic reach, membership, and resources of the WFP will be critical for continuing to build this leadership pipeline and holding Democrats accountable to the truly progressive vision that we need to win the next decade.

One key battleground for this political fight will be the issue of voting rights. On the national level and in red states, we will see concerted efforts to restrict access to the ballot for communities of color, immigrants, and low-income people. We must defend against this wherever it occurs—through all of the tactics mentioned above. But progressives must also go on offense where we can to expand suffrage and make registering to vote and casting a ballot as easy as possible. This is intrinsically the right thing to do. It will also prove instrumentally valuable, as we seek to build progressive political power.

Finally, it bears mention that some of these tactics may bear a resemblance to those that conservatives have deployed over the past decade—after all, litigation and legislative obstructionism have been the hallmark of efforts to block President Obama’s agenda since 2009. But there is a key difference: our way forward will, and must, be rooted in radical empathy—that is, a commitment to try to put ourselves in the shoes of others who are under attack. Put differently, radical empathy in this context means that we understand attacks on the lives and livelihoods of others as attacks on ourselves. It means that we will put our bodies and our professional lives on the line to protect our neighbors and their families.

Such empathy also means listening to and understanding the pain and alienation in communities across the country that tilted towards Donald Trump—especially white working-class people who voted for him because they have seen their livelihoods crumble and come to conclude that the system is rigged against them. Progressives must, of course, forcefully call out hatred and the attacks on our communities that will become a fixture of the next four years, and there is a moral imperative to prioritize the safety and well-being of those communities under imminent threat of attack. But we must also seek to understand those whose votes have endangered us—and, where possible, both listen actively to, and articulate a vision that can build bridges to them.

There are no shortcuts to diffusing the worst of what a Trump presidency could become. The next four years will undoubtedly bring intense fear and pain for people around this country. Many progressives feel right now like they are in the wilderness, and that we may be there for some time. But if we can respond strategically to this moment—and harness our capacity for collective action, legislative maneuvering, and aggressive litigation to block as much of the Trump agenda possible, while identifying opportunities to make local and state progress and building our political muscle—then we can still win the next decade.

The Transition of Power is Complete, January 20, 2017

Media preview The last circle of Washington DC for the Obama’s.

President Donald J. Trump The new White House website.

President Donald J. Trump

Donald J. Trump is the 45th President of the United States. He believes the United States has incredible potential and will go on to exceed anything that it has achieved in the past. His campaign slogan was Make America Great Again, and that is exactly what he intends to do.

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Barack Obama was not able to close Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, he did not pardon Bowe Bergdahl or Rod Blagojevich or Edward Snowden. The matter of executive protection for Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama is an unanswered question.

Meanwhile. President Trump has a full calendar of actions on his calendar.

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Reuters: Donald Trump is preparing to sign executive actions on his first day in the White House on Friday to take the opening steps to crack down on immigration, build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and roll back outgoing President Barack Obama’s policies.

Trump, a Republican elected on Nov. 8 to succeed Democrat Obama, arrived in Washington on a military plane with his family a day before he will be sworn in during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

Aides said Trump would not wait to wield one of the most powerful tools of his office, the presidential pen, to sign several executive actions that can be implemented without the input of Congress.

“He is committed to not just Day 1, but Day 2, Day 3 of enacting an agenda of real change, and I think that you’re going to see that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Thursday, telling reporters to expect activity on Friday, during the weekend and early next week.

Trump plans on Saturday to visit the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia. He has harshly criticized the agency and its outgoing chief, first questioning the CIA’s conclusion that Russia was involved in cyber hacking during the U.S. election campaign, before later accepting the verdict. Trump also likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazi Germany.

Trump’s advisers vetted more than 200 potential executive orders for him to consider signing on healthcare, climate policy, immigration, energy and numerous other issues, but it was not clear how many orders he would initially approve, according to a member of the Trump transition team who was not authorized to talk to the press.

Signing off on orders puts Trump, who has presided over a sprawling business empire but has never before held public office, in a familiar place similar to the CEO role that made him famous, and will give him some early victories before he has to turn to the lumbering process of getting Congress to pass bills.

The strategy has been used by other presidents, including Obama, in their first few weeks in office.

“He wants to show he will take action and not be stifled by Washington gridlock,” said Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer.

Trump is expected to impose a federal hiring freeze and take steps to delay a Labor Department rule due to take effect in April that would require brokers who give retirement advice to put their clients’ best interests first.

He also will give official notice he plans to withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, Spicer said. “I think you will see those happen very shortly,” Spicer said.

Obama, ending eight years as president, made frequent use of his executive powers during his second term in office, when the Republican-controlled Congress stymied his efforts to overhaul immigration and environmental laws. Many of those actions are now ripe targets for Trump to reverse.

 

BORDER WALL

Trump is expected to sign an executive order in his first few days to direct the building of a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and actions to limit the entry of asylum seekers from Latin America, among several immigration-related steps his advisers have recommended.

That includes rescinding Obama’s order that allowed more than 700,000 people brought into the United States illegally as children to stay in the country on a two-year authorization to work and attend college, according to several people close to the presidential transition team.

It is unlikely Trump’s order will result in an immediate roundup of these immigrants, sources told Reuters. Rather, he is expected to let the authorizations expire.

The issue could set up a confrontation with Obama, who told reporters on Wednesday he would weigh in if he felt the new administration was unfairly targeting those immigrants.

Advisers to Trump expect him to put restrictions on people entering the United States from certain countries until a system for “extreme vetting” for Islamist extremists can be set up.

During his presidential campaign, Trump proposed banning non-American Muslims from entering the United States, but his executive order regarding immigration is expected to be based on nationality rather than religion.

Another proposed executive order would require all Cabinet departments to disclose and pause current work being done in connection with Obama’s initiatives to curb carbon emissions to combat climate change.

Trump also is expected to extend prohibitions on future lobbying imposed on members of his transition team.

 

‘THE HIGHEST IQ’

Washington was turned into a virtual fortress ahead of the inauguration, with police ready to step in to separate protesters from Trump supporters at any sign of unrest.

As Obama packed up to leave the White House, Trump and his family laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery and attended a concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

Trump spoke earlier to lawmakers and Cabinet nominees at a luncheon in a ballroom at his hotel, down the street from the White House, announcing during brief remarks that he would pick Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets of the National Football League, as U.S. ambassador to Britain.

“We have a lot of smart people. I tell you what, one thing we’ve learned, we have by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled,” Trump said.

Trump has selected all 21 members of his Cabinet, along with six other key positions requiring Senate confirmation. The Senate is expected on Friday to vote to confirm retired General James Mattis, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, and retired General John Kelly, his homeland security choice.

Senate Republicans had hoped to confirm as many as seven Cabinet members on Friday, but Democrats balked at the pace. Trump spokesman Spicer accused Senate Democrats of “stalling tactics.”

Also in place for Monday will be 536 “beachhead team members” at government agencies, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said, a small portion of the thousands of positions Obama’s appointees will vacate.

Trump has asked 50 Obama staffers in critical posts to stay on until replacements can be found, including Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Brett McGurk, envoy to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.

The list includes Adam Szubin, who has long served in an “acting” capacity in the Treasury Department’s top anti-terrorism job because his nomination has been held up by congressional Republicans since Obama named him to the job in April 2015.

The Supreme Court said U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who will administer the oath of office on Friday, met with Trump on Thursday to discuss inauguration arrangements.

 

 

 

Obama Names his Post-Presidency Staff

Obama assembles his post-presidential team

TheHill: President Obama has assembled a staff led by a longtime White House spokesman to help him navigate his post-presidential career.

Obama has tapped Eric Schultz,  (Getty) currently his principal deputy press secretary, as a senior adviser at his new personal office in Washington.

Schultz will develop a strategy for Obama’s public profile and coordinate with Democrats on Capitol Hill, liberal activists and alumni from the White House and his campaigns.

“President Obama asked Eric to do this not only because he’s a gifted communicator, but because he trusts his sound judgement,” Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said in a statement.

Jarrett said Schultz, who has worked on Obama’s White House staff for six years, “has the instincts, relationships, and experience to help the president manage this transition.”

Obama will be just 55 years old when he leaves the White House on Friday and has said he plans to have an active post-presidency.

During his last press conference Wednesday, Obama said he might speak out in situations “where I think our core values may be at stake” under his successor, Donald Trump.

That includes “systematic discrimination,” suppression of voters or the press, and mass deportations of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Schultz, who got his start in politics on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, will lead a small team of aides assisting Obama.

Former Justice Department official Kevin Lewis  will serve as primary spokesman for the former president and Caroline Adler Morales  will reprise her role as communications director to Michelle Obama.

“The president is a transformational figure in American history and he takes seriously his next role as citizen,” Schultz said in a statement. “Caroline and Kevin are two of the best communicators in the business and the president is enormously grateful they will be staying as part of his team.”

The hires were first reported by Politico.

Obama has reportedly leased office space at the World Wildlife Fund headquarters in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, located roughly a mile from his family’s rental home in Kalorama.

That office is separate from the Obama Foundation, which is based in Chicago and run by longtime friend Marty Nesbitt and former White House political director David Simas. The foundation is tasked with raising money for Obama’s presidential library on the city’s South Side.

 

Hey Trump Meet America Under Siege 2017

Add outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry who will not be attending and not providing a reason. Further, in Barack Obama’s last White House press briefing, he refused to comment on his thoughts as to those in his party that will not be attending.

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In his final press conference as president on Wednesday, Barack Obama declined to comment on the growing list of Democrats who are refusing to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday

FOX News’ Kevin Corke asked the 44th president if he supports the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to boycott Trump’s inauguration.

“With respect to the inauguration, I’m not going to comment on those issues,” Obama responded. “All I know is I’m going to be there, so is Michelle.”

First lady Michelle Obama seemed to indicate her support for Rep. John Lewis, who is one of the most prominent lawmakers boycotting the inauguration, when she sent a tweet calling him a “great leader” on Monday. More here.

Related reading: A.N.S.W.E.R. Sued over Free Speech Space on Inauguration

Related reading: Here Are All the Members of Congress Who Are Boycotting Trump’s Inauguration — and Why

 

Protesters host ‘Queer Dance Party’ in front of Mike Pence’s DC home

For Reference: Bradley Manning’s Charge Sheet, Then Swap

Obama says he granted Manning clemency ‘in the pursuit of justice’

USAToday: President Obama defended his decision to release Army Private Chelsea Manning from prison early, telling reporters at his last press conference as president Wednesday that “I feel very comfortable that justice has been served.”

Obama said the commutation of Manning balanced national security interests with Manning’s remorse and her long sentence.

“First of all, let’s be clear, Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence,” he said. “Given she went to trial and due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that the sentence that she received was very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received — and that she had served a significant amount of time — it made sense to commute a part of her sentence.”

Related: Pentagon recommended against Manning commutation, official says

It must be mentioned here too that while Obama’s pen is busy on felons in U.S. jails and transferring those in Guantanamo, what about that Iranian prisoner swap? We were only told about getting back the Americans held in detention in Iran, but Obama freed and included in the swap 21 Iranians held in prison in the United States.

But many in the group were assisting Iran’s military, spy services and nuclear program, providing what one U.S. attorney called a threat to national security. At least two suspects reportedly lent logistical support to what the United States considers a terrorist group.

Seven of the 21 were pardoned or had their sentences commuted as part of the trade for four Americans imprisoned in Iran. The other 14 were fugitives, believed to be overseas, and arrest warrants were dropped against them.

Among the 14 were Hamid Arabnejad and Gholamreza Mahmoudi, senior executives with Iran’s Mahan airline. U.S. officials say the airline ran supplies to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a terrorist group.

The airline also is accused of providing logistics support, including covert travel, to the Quds Force, the elite overseas unit of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. has designated the Quds Force a supporter of terrorism since 2007. Arabnejad was separately accused of using Mahan to smuggle weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad for the “regime’s violent crackdown against its own citizens,” according to a 3-year-old Department of Treasury designation that imposes sanctions. More here from LATimes.

*** Now back to Manning’s charge sheet.