Stephan: Beneath the umbrella of the pandemic Trump and his Igors are dismantling 30 years of pollution controls in order to allow greater corporate profits. Thus they show their endless contempt for ordinary Americans, the wellbeing of the country, and the earth itself. And yet his approval rating goes up. Today it is 44.2%, up nearly a percent from a week ago. Nothing he does, nothing he says seems to touch the thinking of the Magas.
The EPA signaled Thursday it will not regulate perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel, in drinking water. Credit: wonderisland/Shutterstock
Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President Donald Trump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate does not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.
According to the New York Times, the EPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all, a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).
The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.
The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate.
“EPA’s cynical decision to defy a court order and the law, and to ignore the science that, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has said, dictates a strong […]
Stephan: Eric Trump in a normal world would be an anonymous nobody somewhere. But in the reality show that America has become under Trump he is a national figure. But media attention does not increase your IQ as this report makes clear. And what is worse the Magas will believe what he says, further complicating the nation's recovery.
Eric Trump and Lara Trump, President Trump’s son and daughter-in-law, applaud as Trump speaks at an “Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch” in January at King Jesus International Ministry in Miami. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
Eric Trump claimed Saturday that the coronavirus will “magically” vanish after the November election and allow the country to fully reopen — an assertion that has no basis in science and is contradicted by health experts worldwide.
In an interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, Trump suggested the president’s critics were using the pandemic to undermine his father’s rallies, calling it a “cognizant strategy” that would cease once it was no longer politically expedient.
“You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3,” the younger Trump said. “And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”
He also attacked former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and boasted about crowd sizes at President Trump’s political events.
“They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which […]
Julian Borger in Washington, Helen Davidson in Sydney, Leyland Cecco in Toronto, Daniel Boffey in Brussels Philip Oltermann in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome, Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Emmanuel Akinwotu in London, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As I am writing this I am listening in the background to a BBC commentary show discuss the collapse of America's status in the world because of Trump and his Igors. Before that, I listened to an Australia news program in which the main topic of discussion was the rise of China as the major world leader as America is diminished as a result of the incompetence, petulance, and ignorance of Trump.
This has become a major geopolitical trend, which may seem distant and of little importance to your personal life, but as a result of this trend, how America interacts with other countries will be profoundly affected and that, in turn, will affect everything from trade, food, and travel, to military cooperation. In three and a half years, Trump has destroyed America's status and the world has changed.
Donald Trump participates in a tour of Owens & Minor Inc, a medical supply company, on Thursday in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.
Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.
“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
Stephan: It is amazing to watch Trump eliminate or intimidate any oversight of his actions, with the effect that the United States is increasingly becoming a christofascist kleptocracy. This article explains what is happening and it is frightening.
Credit: U.S. State Department
President Donald Trump has removed State Department Inspector General Steve Linick and replaced him with an ally of Vice President Mike Pence — the latest in a series of moves against independent government watchdogs in recent months.
Trump informed Congress of his intent to oust Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday night.
The president said he “no longer” had the “fullest confidence” in Linick and promised to send the Senate a nominee “who has my confidence and who meets the appropriate qualifications.” The executive branch is required to notify Congress 30 days ahead of time if it intends to remove an inspector general.
Trump’s move infuriated Democrats who say he’s trying to circumvent oversight of his administration, undermining the ability of other branches to hold him accountable. The move follows Trump’s anger at being impeached, but it also comes as the White House struggles to combat the coronavirus pandemic just months before the presidential election.
“The president’s late-night, weekend firing of the State Department inspector general has accelerated his dangerous pattern […]
I believe any woman or man who believes they have been harassed, let alone molested, should have the right to come forward and have that charge evaluated by neutral parties, and if found to be valid whomever the molester, whatever their rank or station, they should be tried and found guilty. On those grounds alone Trump should never have been chosen as a candidate let alone elected as President.
That said I think Tara Reade's charges are absurd on several levels. When I was in government I had several occasions to interact with Biden, personally, and with his staff. In contrast to so many Congress members, Biden was considered notable for never having had a word breathed about inappropriate behavior; quite the contrary his love and fidelity for his wife were remarked upon.
But more than that is the description Reade makes about her molestation. The idea that a senior senator would press a staffer up against the wall in a public senate office building corridor, pull up her skirt, pull down her panties and thrust his fingers into her vagina is only plausible to someone who has never been in those corridors. They are filled with staffers, reporters, film crews, other congresspeople, and hundreds of Americans who come to see their senator. Those corridors are about as public as a space can get.
When Tara Reade first made her assault allegation against Joe Biden, I thought the charge was more likely to be true than false. To be clear, I had no intention of changing my vote. The allegation came too late to reopen the nominating process without doing violence to the expressed will of the electorate. And I’ve always believed the primary criteria for voting on a candidate is their policy impact (which is why I wrote a column in 2018 defending Republicans who still supported Roy Moore over Doug Jones). But I did feel bad about voting for a candidate I suspected had done something terrible.
Tara Reade Credit: AP Photo/Donald Thompson
Since then, however, three detailed reports — by Vox’s Laura McGann, PBS NewsHour, and Politico’s Natasha Korecki — have delved into Reade’s allegations. Neither reaches a definitive conclusion. But all of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. At this point, Reade’s allegation seems to me to be more likely to be false than true.
McGann’s story recounts her yearlong effort to report on and corroborate Reade’s […]
