Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Clinton House of Cards Falling?

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The Hill:

It is the beginning of the end of the House of Clinton:

1. There is the stench of political death around Hillary, Bill, Chelsea and the entire House of Clinton.

2. You could feel it when Republican front-runner Donald Trump hit back — hard — over the “penchant for sexism” charge by basically calling Hillary Clinton an enabler in the former president’s sexual shenanigans.

3. When have we ever seen the Clintons back off? But they did.

4. Then came further reports about an expanded FBI probe of her handling of secure information; the nexus of State Department favors for donors to the Clinton Foundation; and the story that Hillary Clinton or her staff might have lied to FBI agents in this probe.

5. All of this has raised the speculation, yet again: Will President Obama stop the Department of Justice (DOJ) from indicting her if the eight-person DOJ team working with over 100 FBI agents recommends criminal charges?

6. The president will be in an odd situation: He ran against the Clintons. He is known to loathe Bill Clinton. He apparently does not want the Clintons back in charge of the Democratic Party (thus removing the thousands of Obama acolytes with cushy patronage jobs).

7. So: If the DOJ recommends an indictment and he K.O.’s it, he will have his own legacy smeared with a permanent taint of having covered up for the Clintons.

8. If he allows an indictment to move ahead, that will be the end of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Period. She may think she can march on despite charges, but that would be self-delusional. Her campaign will be finished the day charges are filed by Obama’s Justice Department.

9. She can’t claim “politics as usual” or that old “right-wing conspiracy” nonsense as this will be Obama’s Justice Department — not a Republican-controlled entity — bringing these charges.

10. Now, even without an indictment, Hillary Clinton’s fortunes are rapidly sinking.

11. As of today, she is on track to lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — to an unelectable 72-year-old Vermont socialist!

12. That tells us how politically weak and out of it the Clinton machine has become.

13. It is no coincidence that Vice President Joe Biden has suddenly resurfaced — first in a Hartford, Conn. TV interview stating that he regrets not running “every day,” and then by softly criticizing Hillary Clinton for not leading on the anti-1 percent front.

14. Biden may very well be warming up in the bullpen for a possible emergency entry into the Democratic field once Clinton is charged and has to withdraw.

15. In the meantime, we see a frantic, panic-stricken Clinton family out on the stump hitting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on healthcare and guns. But they’re hitting him from the center on healthcare — not the left, where the votes are.

16. They are running national TV ads on guns on MSNBC; there are ads every few minutes. If Team Clinton members think they can turn around her negative trajectory over guns, they are sorely mistaken.

17. Economics is the main issue.

18. And Hillary Clinton is seen as being in the tank for corporate interests, while Sanders has stood up to them. Period. That is the race.

19. The 2016 campaign is a political revolution.

20. The House of Bush is also falling.

21. So is the Establishment of both political parties.

22. Who is more establishment than the Clintons and the Bushes?

23. Who has milked the political system for more money, gigs, access and cushy jobs for cronies than the Clintons and the Bushes?

24. But this is the year that the public is standing up to the status quo.

25. We are witnessing history: the fall of the Houses of Clinton and Bush.

26. Who is rising?

27. The outsiders.

Further reading from a former Hillary senior aide: Admits Bill’s exploitation of women…

Politico: For the better part of the last month, Donald Trump has hit Hillary Clinton for playing the “woman’s card” in her attacks against him, frequently mentioning her husband’s past affairs in an attempt to discredit her argument that she would be champion for women in the White House.

For one of Clinton’s closest senior advisers as first lady, however, those arguments ring hollow.

“Here’s what I think about that: I think what Bill Clinton did in terms of infidelity was absolutely horrible. A shitty thing to do,” Patti Solis Doyle told David Axelrod in the latest episode of his “The Axe Files” podcast for the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, where she is a resident fellow this winter.

Remarking again what a “shitty thing” it was “to do to her,” Solis Doyle emphasized that it was the president, not his wife, who did anything wrong.

“It was awful. You know, many of us thought about quitting after what he did,” she revealed. “But when we thought about it – when I thought about it – I thought, she didn’t do anything. He is the jerk here.”

Solis Doyle surmised at another point that Axelrod was alluding to a comment in private correspondence in which Clinton wrote to a friend that Lewinsky was a “narcisstic loony toon.”

“It’s not like she went on television or said it publicly. She didn’t say anything publicly about any of the… And, you know, as a woman, if my husband were having some sort of extramarital affair with another woman, I’m sure I wouldn’t have very nice things to say about that woman either. I mean, that’s just normal,” she added. “But she never said anything publicly. And I think it’s its own form of sexism to somehow blame the spouse for what the husband did. I think that’s its own form of sexism.”

Solis Doyle advised Clinton during both of her Senate campaigns as well as serving as her campaign manager during her 2008 presidential campaign until a third-place finish in Iowa necessitated a change. She then worked as a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s campaign, serving as Joe Biden’s campaign chief of staff.

This time, while acknowledging that Bill appears to be the Clinton more at ease at rallies and on the rope line, Solis Doyle remarked that she had “no doubt” that her former boss would be the Democratic nominee.

“You know, Bill Clinton, he gets so much energy from the people at his rallies. When he’s working a rope line, you can just see him light up. You know, she’s tired. She gets tired. She does it. She does it dutifully. Is it her most fun thing to do? No. Would she rather be looking at policy and going through legislation and working with a bunch of experts on how to, you know, improve the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely,” Solis Doyle explained. “This is not her favorite thing to do. It’s a mean, you know, to an end, I guess.”

At the same time, she said, Clinton “seems much more comfortable in her skin this time around than she did in 2008 and I think she’s much more comfortable as a candidate.”

“I think she’s much more prepared for the rigors of a campaign. I always think that you learn so much more from losing than from winning,” she continued. “You learn many more lessons from losing a campaign than from winning one. I think that nobody likes an inevitable frontrunner.”

“I was in a discussion today and I quoted the famous Mario Cuomo about campaigning – ‘you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.’ She doesn’t seem all that comfortable with the poetry,” Axelrod mused. “I used to say that President Obama – and I suspect President Clinton as well – was the guy who cracked the book open the night before the exam, you know, and got the A. And she was the one who stayed up all night and did the extra credit.”

Solis Doyle agreed, responding that Clinton “does her homework” and might not be “the most inspirational kid in the class, right?”

“But man, do you want her running the country? Absolutely,” she said. “She has a level of competency that no one else has in this field both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side and in these times – we’re in some very tenuous times – I think you want her there at the helm.”

 

 

United Way was a Great Charity, Right?

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Yes, but everything is subject to power and money. When it comes to your child, take extreme caution, ask questions, research and don’t trust anyone. That includes Bill Gates and Common Core. You are the real watchdog for your children, regardless of age, take comfort however, there are people doing great work on your behalf. Use these tools.

   <<— Big and scary

Parents: Don’t Listen to the United Way. Don’t Sign Away Your Child’s Data and Give Up a Constitutional Right to Privacy.

The Family Education Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) has been a stumbling block in accessing data in education reformer plans for many years.  According to the ed reform talking points, it is imperative that personally identifiable information be available so that all federal agencies, state educational agencies and third party researchers have access to this information ostensibly to ‘help your child’.   The request for information and the need for this information has been requested repeatedly by education reformers needing that data for company/agency existence.  The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services need that information as well in order to ‘help your child and your family’ reach the goals the government (not the parents) has indicated is success.

From a previous 2013 article on escholar, a company wanting to use data to track students:

 

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Common Core and the revision of FERPA by the US Department of Education allows intensive data mining and sharing of student information to various federal agencies and private firms selected the the USDOEd.  The company eScholar is one education reform company eager and ready to data mine information on students.  From wsj.com and Education Data Companies Chosen, 08.13.2012:

 

New York state education officials Monday said they selected four companies to build a broad education database that will host students’ test scores, curriculum materials and education apps, paid for by up to $50 million in federal Race to the Top funds.

The state Education Department said that by fall 2013, school districts will be able to use one of the data systems created by either ConnectEDU, eScholar or Pearson PLC and its subsidiary Schoolnet.
The systems are supposed to store student test scores, student demographic information, curriculum materials, lesson plans and other items that teachers or parents can access. Companies will get paid, in part, based on how many school districts select their data system.

It’s financially lucrative for data mining companies to compile student data and advantageous for them to have start up funding provided by taxpayer money. eScholar has produced a video about “Bobby”, a hypothetical student the company is tracking.  From the eScholar website:

 

“Have you met Bobby yet?”

(access video here)

Meet Bobby, the newest member of the eScholar myTrack team. We think that educators have a lot of students like Bobby, students who have things that they want to do, but aren’t always sure how to get there. Check out the video to see how Bobby and his team of supporters use myTrack to help him reach his goals. What do you think? Do you have any students like Bobby?  

eScholar is a company that received federal stimulus dollars to track your child without your knowledge or permission.  Could such behavior and practice be considered not just data mining but stalking?

Should the tracking of student academic and non-academic information and sharing it with federal agencies and private organizations without parental/student knowledge/permission be allowed?  How is the difference in the dissemination of personal information about “Bobby” to others and monitoring “Bobby’s” computer usage via the relaxation of FERPA any different than the definition of how stalkers operate?

Here’s an example of what eScholar will gather on “Bobby” and why:

Enabling P-20 Data Warehousing

Today, a consensus has emerged amongst educators at all levels that there is a need to create an LDS that provides a comprehensive view of education from early childhood through postsecondary and beyond (P-20). This capability is essential to maximizing the effectiveness of our efforts to encourage every student to achieve his or her greatest potential. A key element of this LDS is a comprehensive data warehouse that supports the data requirements of the P-20 world. With the introduction of CDW-PS, which integrates with our eScholar Uniq-ID® products supporting unique identification and ID management of individuals from early childhood through postsecondary, eScholar now has a complete solution for a P-20 data warehouse. Thedata model for the CDW-PS product is specifically designed to integrate with the eScholar Complete Data Warehouse® for PK-12 product to create a comprehensive LDS of over 3,000 data elements encompassing student and teacher academic history from pre-K through higher education. This powerful combination enables SEAs to answer key P-20 questions through one software product solution. 

Should the tracking of student academic and non-academic information and sharing it with federal agencies and private organizations without parental/student knowledge/permission be allowed?  How is the difference in the dissemination of personal information about “Bobby” to others and monitoring “Bobby’s” computer usage via the relaxation of FERPA any different than the definition of how stalkers operate?

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The United Way Salt Lake City (a private NGO) is making a pitch to parents to sign away their children’s right to privacy by agreeing to waive their FERPA protections so that the organization can ‘help’ their child and agencies can then determine the ‘right’ services for their children.  Apparently the Salt Lake City United Way just can’t do its job without parents giving their human capital information to federal agencies, NGOs like The United Way and third party researchers.   Unlike escholar, United Way is making a pitch directly to parents to give away a right that has been constitutionally provided.  The United Way is asking parents to provide active permission to data mine students.  It doesn’t give information on exactly where that information is directed and other than promises that it will make United Way’s partners jobs easier, there is no indication on who has access to this data.

From Emily Talmage in United Way to Parents: Give Us Your Gold:

To get around this law, United Way of Salt Lake City, which has recently partnered with an organization called “StriveTogether” – a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks Foundation that has received millions from the Gates Foundation – is now encouraging parents to sign a form waiving their FERPA rights.

They’ve even put together a video to convince parents just how important it is that they give up their children’s personal information to just about any organization in the city that wants it – including the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce.

 

Here is The United Way’s video cajoling parents into giving their child’s data away.  It’s the same argument made by escholar, it’s because we want the best for your child.  Don’t fall for it.  It’s to have access to the dossier on your human capital.  Do a search on ‘United Way and FERPA’. The United Way is supportive of this administration’s educational reforms and ESSA and many United Way agencies are requesting parents give away their child’s constitutional right to privacy.

The 10th Amendment, Trump Doesn’t Get It

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Perhaps he has not read the paper or listened to the news when it comes to the Bundy matter in Nevada or the standoff in Burns, Oregon. Perhaps he is not familiar with the EPA failures or the Fish, Game and Wild Life Commission. Check out this interview that has received no press.

It is important to note, Ducks Unlimited is the best private organization in the nation that takes extreme care of water, foul and the land.

Q&A: Donald Trump on Guns, Hunting, and Conservation

January 21, 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada

FieldandStream On the third evening of the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show, editorial director of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, Anthony Licata, interviewed Donald Trump on issues important to sportsmen and women. Trump came to the interview, on the 36th floor of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, with his son Donald Trump Jr., who is an avid hunter and shooter.

Here’s the Republican presidential candidate’s take on President Obama’s recent executive orders on firearms, the privatization of federal lands, Hillary Clinton, and hunting with his sons.

Anthony Licata: Thank you very much for agreeing to meet with Field & Stream and Outdoor Life to talk about…

Donald Trump: Great magazine.

AL: Thank you very much. I guess the first thing I’d like to ask is, are you a gun owner, a hunter? The two of you?

DT: I do have a gun, and I have a concealed-carry permit, actually, which is a very hard thing to get in New York. And, of course, the problem is once you get to the border line of New Jersey or anyplace else, you can’t do it, which is ridiculous, because I’m a very big Second Amendment person. But I do have a gun, and my sons are major hunters, and I’m a member of the NRA.

AL: Do you hunt with your sons? How did they get into the sports?

DT: Well, they got in and just loved it. And their grandfather was a hunter, and he would take them hunting as young boys, and they just loved it. They have a tremendous passion for it. And I don’t devote very much time to it because I’m so busy with everything, but Eric and Don absolutely love it, and they’re expert at it. They’re expert shots, and they’re expert at it.

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

AL: If you were elected President, would you reverse the executive orders that President Obama announced on guns recently?

DT: Yes, I would do it. I think it’s ridiculous. I think, number one, if you are going to do anything—and I don’t think you should do anything, because we have enough rules and balances and checks—you have to go through Congress. You can’t just write an executive order and sign it. You’re supposed to talk to the congressmen who represent a lot of your readers, and, you know, they have to sort of say “Let’s do this” or “Let’s do that.” You don’t do an executive order. But I’m for doing nothing. You know, it’s a mental-health problem, right? And the guns aren’t pulling the triggers, okay. It’s the people that are pulling the triggers. We have a big mental-health problem. And they’re closing up all of the hospitals, all of the institutions, and that’s our problem. And so I would absolutely reverse many of his executive orders beyond this, many of his executive orders.

AL: Let me ask you this—back to conservation and access for hunters’ rights to get on public land. One of the things that we’ve found is so much of this campaign—not your campaign, but this election cycle—has talked about cutting budgets and reducing the federal government. And what the budget is for managing public lands right now is at one percent. In 1970, it was two percent. Would you continue to push that number down for wildlife conservation or would you look to invest more?

DT: I don’t think there’s any reason to. And I will say—and I’ve heard this from many of my friends who are really avid hunters and I’ve heard it from my sons who are avid hunters—that the lands are not maintained the way they were by any stretch of the imagination. And we’re going to get that changed; we’re going to reverse that. And the good thing is, I’m in a family where I have—I mean, I’m a member of the NRA, but I have two longtime members of the NRA. They’ve been hunting from the time they were five years old and probably maybe even less than that. And they really understand it. And I like the fact that, you know, I can sort of use them in terms of—they know so much about every single element about every question that you’re asking. And one of the things they’ve complained about for years is how badly the federal lands are maintained, so we’ll get that changed.

Donald Trump Jr.: It’s really all about access. I mean, I feel like the side that’s the anti-hunting crowd, they’re trying to eliminate that access—make it that much more difficult for people to get the next generation in. For me, hunting and fishing kept me out of so much other trouble I would’ve gotten into throughout my life. It’s just so important to be able to maintain that, so that next generation gets into it. And it’s the typical liberal death by a thousand cuts: “We’ll make it a little harder here. Make it a little harder here. We won’t spend the money there.” And it’s not just about hunting—it’s about fishing; it’s about hiking; it’s about access; it’s about being able to get in there and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy those great traditions that are so, you know, so much the foundation of America. And we’d be against anything like that. And frankly, it’d be about refunding those—making sure those lands are maintained properly; making sure they’re not going into private hands to be effectively walled off to the general public. And that’s something really important to us.

AL: Absolutely. How would you balance energy exploration and extraction on public lands? How would you balance that with the need for recreation and multiple use? Right now, gas prices are low, but they might not stay that way.

DT: Well, I’m very much into energy, and I’m very much into fracking and drilling, and we never want to be hostage again to OPEC and go back to where we were. And right now, we’re at a very interesting point because right now there’s so much energy. And I’ve always said it—there’s so much energy. And new technology has found that. And maybe that’s an advantage and maybe—actually, it’s more of an advantage in terms of your question, because we don’t have to do the kind of drilling that we did. But I am for energy exploration, as long as we don’t do anything to damage the land. And right now we don’t need too much; there’s a lot of energy.

AL: Time for one more?

DT: Yeah, go ahead.

AL: If you’re elected, will you go hunting as President with your son?

DT: I would do that. With my both sons, I would do that. And I feel very good with them. And, you know, I’m in New York City, so I have a concealed-carry permit, and I meant to tell you—I just wanted to point that out because it’s so hard to get, and it’s one of the hardest things you can get. And very hard. And as far as going hunting with my boys, that would be something that I’d love to do. I’ve done it before, but I’d love to do it.

AL [to Donald Trump Jr.]: Where would you take him?

DTJ: I would come up with something good. I mean, I think we’d keep it to the upland-type birds. You know, that’s how I’ve introduced anyone that I’ve ever introduced to hunting. And I’ve taken some of these people that are city people, and just take them on a walk-up—go shoot some clays, and then take them on a walk-up. And not one of those people has ever turned to me and [not] said, “You know, that was one the greatest weekends I’ve ever had in my life.” You just need to get people into it. You need to be a mentor. And that’s what we need more of in this industry: mentors. To get rid of, you know, some of the difficulties, the barriers of entry, which are a little bit intimidating at times. So being able to create that, open up those doors, create some new hunters, and bring the next generation of hunters into the game.

AL: Excellent.

DT: You see what I mean.

AL: Yeah, I do see what you mean.

DT: Thank you very much.

AL: Thank you very much.

There Goes Another IRS Hard Drive

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To be honest, this sounds like the work of Hillary’s camp for the benefit of the Clinton Foundation at work, certainly while everyone is concentrating on the fight between the parties and the presidential campaign.

InpartfromTheHill: “The IRS’s missteps in preserving documents — whether they be the subject of a congressional investigation, court order, or FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request — are concerning, and necessitate further oversight into the agency’s document preservation practices,” Hatch and Wyden wrote.

The matter relates to the IRS’s controversial hiring of an outside law firm to help in an audit of Microsoft, Law360 reported.

Chaffetz, Jordan Erupt After IRS Erases Another Hard Drive

 DailyCaller: Leading members of Congress are ripping IRS officials for erasing a computer hard drive after a federal judge ordered it to be preserved.

“The destruction of evidence subject to preservation orders and subpoenas has been an ongoing problem under your leadership at the IRS,” Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen late Thursday.

“It is stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect,” Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said in the letter to Koskinen.

The IRS recently admitted in court to erasing the hard drive even though a federal judge had issued a preservation related to a Microsoft Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the federal tax agency last year, according to court documents. Microsoft accuses the IRS of inappropriately hiring an outside law firm to audit it and of failing to hand over related documents requested under the FOIA.

Chaffetz and other members of the oversight panel began calling for Koskinen’s impeachment in October. Chaffetz and Jordan in their letter point out that the IRS in March 2014 also destroyed 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails sent or received by Lois Lerner, former director of IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division.

Lerner was the central figure in the scandal sparked by the tax agency’s illegal targeting and harassment of conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.

Samuel Maruca, owner of the hard drive in question and a former senior IRS executive, participated in the IRS hiring of the outside law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP allegedly to investigate Microsoft. Maruca left the IRS in August 2014, according to court documents.

Chaffetz and Jordan told Koskinen to hand over all documents on IRS preservation policies and all documents related to the destruction of Lerner and Maruca’s hard drives.

 

DHS is Not Deporting Visa Overstays

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The numbers are staggering but just for the time period of 2015, 482,000 are residing in the United States illegally. This number is clearly worse than those numbers coming in from the southern border.

DHS admits it’s not deporting most visa overstays

WashingtonExaminer: A pair of Department of Homeland Security officials told the Senate Wednesday that the government does not search for most of the people who overstay their temporary visas, a day after DHS said that nearly 500,000 people were still in the U.S. after having overstayed their visas last year.

“I didn’t mean to imply that we’re actually out monitoring them,” Craig Healy, an assistant director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during Senate Judiciary subcommittee panel. Healy said that they review the universe of people who overstayed their visas and “prioritize” the deportation of people who went on to commit other crimes.

Their exchange came at the outset of a hearing on the federal government’s failure to implement a biometric system to track entries into and exits from the country, as required by a 2004 law. A Customs and Border Patrol official said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing “gridlock” at U.S. airports, a response that failed to allay bipartisan concern that the lack of this system is an ongoing national security threat.

“The biometric exit system is still not off the ground and that is unfortunate, very unfortunate, because it is a matter of national security,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting, said during the hearing.

John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing two-hour delays when boarding airplanes. “It’s the placement of the technology and how you collect it to ensure that the person actually departed the United States,” Wagner said. “There’s no zone to do that.”

These answers frustrated Democratic lawmakers who otherwise disagree with Sessions and other immigration hawks the issue of border security and deportations. “It’s hard for me to envision that we can’t figure out where to get a space to do this at an airport or seaport,” said Senator Al Franken, D-Minn. “If you can’t solve it in 11 or 12 years, how can we know it will ever be solved?”

DHS’s report saying hundreds of thousands of people remained in the United States after having overstayed their visas drew complaints from both parties, but Sessions in particular.

“That is a population of individuals that is larger than any city in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina,” Sessions said. Healy replied that about 3,000 of the people who had overstayed their visas were under investigation, a statistic Sessions cited to argue that President Obama’s team has made no effort to implement the system or to deport people who overstay their visas, as long as those people “keep their nose clean” and do nothing to draw the attention of law enforcement or counterterrorism officials.

He said the lack of a biometric exit system was part of a broader failure by the Obama administration to implement federal immigration law.

“Our executive branch is on strike against the will of the American people,” Sessions said. “Simply put, there is no border at all if we don’t enforce our visa rules.”

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Hold on, there is more…

Administration eases visa rules for travelers visiting terror hotspots

FNC: The Obama administration on Thursday eased visa rules for certain European travelers who have visited terror hotspots in the Middle East and Africa, triggering a backlash from congressional lawmakers who sought the restrictions for security reasons.

Moments after the announcement, two key Republicans declared the administration is “blatantly breaking the law” – a law that President Obama signed – by implementing the changes.

“This is not a difference of opinion over statutory interpretation, it is a clear contradiction of the law and the agreement we reached with the White House,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., author of the bill, said in a statement.

The revised requirements announced Thursday pertain to changes passed by Congress in the Visa Waiver Program.

Lawmakers had sought new restrictions to tighten up the program – which allows visa-free travel for residents of eligible countries — in order to prevent Europeans who have joined ISIS from entering the United States. Under the newly passed Visa Waiver Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, nationals of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan as well as other travelers who have visited those countries since Mar. 1, 2011 now must apply for a visa in order to travel to the U.S.

The administration implemented those changes Thursday — but with some changes of its own.

Under the revised requirements, some Europeans who have traveled to those four countries in the last five years may still be allowed to travel to the United States without obtaining a visa if they meet certain criteria.

The administration announced it will use its waiver authority — granted to it in the legislation — to give waivers to travelers who traveled to the terror hotspots as journalists, for work with humanitarian agencies or on behalf of international organizations, regional organizations and sub-national governments on official duty.

Further, an additional waiver was announced for people who have traveled to Iran “for legitimate business-related purposes” since the conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal in July. The administration offers waivers for individuals who have traveled to Iraq for business as well.

Republicans reacted angrily to the waivers, saying the Obama administration had exploited the limited authority and has compromised national security.

“President Obama and his administration’s decision to abuse their limited waiver authority and allow scores of people who have traveled to or are dual nationals of countries like Iraq and Syria flies in the face of reason and congressional intent,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement.

“The Obama Administration is essentially rewriting the law by blowing wide open a small window of discretion that Congress gave it for law enforcement and national security reasons,” Goodlatte said.

Under the visa program itself, citizens of 38 countries, mostly in Europe, are generally allowed to travel to the United States without applying for a visa. But they still have to submit biographical information to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.

The Homeland Security Department said waivers for some ESTA applicants will be granted on a “case-by-case” basis. Those travelers who are denied visa-free travel can still apply for visa through a U.S. embassy in their home country.

The new restrictions had previously been criticized by the Iranian government which suggested the U.S. might be violating the nuclear deal by penalizing legitimate business travel to the country.