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2594d ago / 10:00 PM UTC

Can Trump 'Open the Mines' Like He Said He Would?

JOBS

In rallies across coal country, Donald Trump made a big, crowd-pleasing promise: He’d bring back the mining jobs.

“We’re gonna open the mines,” he said to big cheers in Charleston, West Virginia, as if the shuttered coal mines across eastern America’s coal country could hit a switch and reinstate the jobs once he won the White House.

“He can’t bring back coal jobs in any meaningful way unless he’s capable of inventing a time machine.”

But experts say despite Trump’s election, those jobs aren’t coming back.

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2416d ago / 10:15 PM UTC

Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils as CEOs Quit

WINNING

President Donald Trump dissolved two of his business advisory councils Wednesday after a rash of CEOs resigned in the wake of his response to a white nationalist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred Saturday.

"Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both," Trump tweeted. "Thank you all!

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2416d ago / 10:14 PM UTC

Trump Unwinds Regulations, but Overshadows Efforts With Controversy

INFRASTRUCTURE

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday designed to speed up construction of infrastructure projects by eliminating portions of the federal permitting process, like an Obama-era mandate aimed at protecting future infrastructure from rising seawaters, and streamlining others.

Holding up a flow chart that he said showed a lengthy highway approval process — which could take 20 years — the president said his order would bring the process down to less than two years.

“This is going to happen quickly. That’s what I’m signing today,” he said, according to a White House transcript.

The news of the executive order was buried quickly when the president provoked widespread controversy with remarks about the violence in Charlottesville that were condemned by lawmakers across the political spectrum and praised by white nationalists.

2435d ago / 6:48 PM UTC

Second-Quarter Economic Growth Now Seen Doubling Pace of First Quarter

WINNING

Economic growth is expected to be double the first quarter's pace when second-quarter GDP data is released Friday morning.

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2435d ago / 6:45 PM UTC

House GOP Approves $1.6 Billion for Trump’s Wall

IMMIGRATION

The House passed a $788 billion spending bill Thursday that combines a $1.6 billion down payment for President Donald Trump's controversial border wall with Mexico with a whopping budget increase for the Pentagon.

The 235-192 vote both eases a large backlog of unfinished spending bills and gives Trump and his House GOP allies political wins heading into the August recess. Challenging hurdles remain in front of the measure, however, which will meet with more powerful Democratic opposition in the Senate.

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2444d ago / 3:14 AM UTC

DHS Chief: U.S. Tested Prototype Bombs Before Implementing New Airplane Electronics Rules

TERRORISM

ASPEN, Colo. — The U.S. government tested two prototype bombs, based on new terrorist technology, to determine that they could take down a passenger jet before implementing new cabin rules on electronic devices, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told NBC News’ Pete Williams Wednesday night

“We tested it on a real airplane on the ground, pressurized, and to say the least, it destroyed the airplane,” Kelly said during the opening session of the Aspen Security Forum.

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2444d ago / 10:40 PM UTC

Supreme Court Allows Broader Family Exceptions to Trump Travel Ban

IMMIGRATION

The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday cleared the way for a broader list of family exceptions to President Trump's ban on issuing visas to people in six Muslim-majority countries.

The justices declined to put a halt to a ruling by a federal judge in Hawaii who said grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and siblings-in-law must be added to the list of close family members who can still get visas to travel to the U.S. during the 90 days while Trump's executive order is in force.

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2444d ago / 8:38 PM UTC

Insurers Fear Latest Chaos Over Health Care

HEALTH CARE

Health insurers expressed concern Tuesday over the uncertainty surrounding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and President Donald Trump's most recent call to let Obamacare "fail."

"With open enrollment for 2018 only three months away, our members and all Americans need the certainty and security of knowing coverage will be available and affordable for them," said Justine Handelman, senior vice president for policy at Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the nation’s largest insurers.

Insurers’ most immediate worry is the federal cost-sharing subsidies they’ve relied on to help make plans in the ACA’s exchanges more affordable. Trump has dubbed those funds "ransom money" and threatened to withhold them to hasten the collapse of Obamacare.

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2456d ago / 10:52 PM UTC

Outgoing Ethics Director: Appearances Count on Trump Financial Conflicts

HONESTY

The outgoing head of the federal government’s ethics watchdog agency said he is leaving his post still unsure whether President Donald Trump is using the White House to enrich his businesses and himself.

"I can't know what their intention is," Walter Shaub Jr., the director of the independent Office of Government Ethics, said in an interview with CBS News. "I know that the effect is that there's an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency. And appearance matters as much as reality.”

Shaub wrote Trump on Thursday to inform him he would be resigning later this month. The government ethics director clashed with the White House even before Trump was sworn in, especially when it came to how the real estate mogul handled his business interests after his election victory.

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2461d ago / 4:28 PM UTC

Senate Ignores Trump's FAA Privatization Push

INFRASTRUCTURE

After the White House’s Infrastructure Week, which featured speeches and non-binding letters but no more details on Trump's infrastructure policy, the president had just one concrete plan on the table: Privatizing the Federal Aviation Administration.

In a ceremony at the White House, Trump announced that he would push for turning the FAA into a nonprofit private corporation

"It's about time," Trump said on Monday before signing a letter outlining the plan, adding that the change would herald an "air travel revolution."

The Senate, however, passed on Trump's plan — at least for now. It approved legislation last Thursday that would keep the FAA as a federal agency, while demanding greater accountability and adding new protections and funding.

2461d ago / 4:17 PM UTC

Poll: Global Opinion of U.S., Trump Down Since Election

GLOBAL DEALS

“The world is going to respect us again,” the president said on the campaign trail repeatedly. “Believe me.”

Five months into his administration, a new Pew poll reveals the opposite. Global opinions of the president, and the nation he leads, has fallen since Trump’s election: just 22 percent of the rest of the world has confidence in Trump, while 39 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States (up from 26 percent at the end of the Obama’s presidency.)

Just two countries have more confidence in Trump than they did in Obama at the end of his presidency: Israel, with a 7 point more favorable view, and Russia, which has a 42 point more favorable view.

 

2461d ago / 2:13 PM UTC

White House Champions Immigration Crackdown as Public Safety Win

IMMIGRATION

The White House spent an entire day last week telling reporters that the president is “keeping his promises,” and indeed the president is cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Arrests of undocumented immigrants are up, and border crossings are down — a phenomenon his administration credits to the “uncertainty” about how immigration will be handled under the new president.

The president has championed this crackdown as key to making America safer, something that would surely be part of making the country “great again.” He’s launched an office to support victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, met with victims of such crimes at the White House last week, and celebrated the passage of two House bills that boost his efforts.

He championed two House bills which passed last week that would crack down on undocumented immigrants who commit crime , as well. There’s just one hitch: there’s no evidence undocumented immigrants are a public safety risk.  On the contrary, there’s evidence that immigrants — both legal and undocumented — commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans.