Mark Hamill re-voices Trumps New Year tweet as the Joker. GOP Reps pass bill to kill dozens of recently enacted rules in one fell swoop, GOP announces plans to defund Planned Parenthood. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Thursday that Republicans will move to strip all federal funding for Planned Parenthood as part of the process they are using early this year to dismantle Obamacare.
Congressional Republicans have tried for years to zero out all federal funding for Planned Parenthood because the group provides abortion services. The fight over Obamacare helped trigger a 16-day government shutdown in 2013, and Democrats and President Barack Obama insisted any Planned Parenthood provision targeting the group be removed from a bill to fund federal agencies. Further complicating matters for Senate GOP leaders is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who announced this week he plans to vote against the Obamacare repeal legislation because the underlying budget measure it is attached to doesn't balance and adds to the deficit.
If Murkowski, Collins and Paul all voted against the budget bill, it would be enough to torpedo the Obamacare repeal legislation. Someone Changes Hollywood Sign To Read ‘Hollyweed’ HOLLYWOOD (CBSLA.com) — Authorities say someone managed to modify the famed Hollywood sign to read “Hollyweed” in an overnight act of trespass.
Sgt. Guy Juneau with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Security Services told CBS2 the incident unfolded around midnight Saturday after a thrill-seeker climbed the mountain and threw two tarps over the “O’s” to make them appear like “E’s.” It was caught on city surveillance cameras. The Perrot family visiting from Australia told CBS2 they noticed the sign from their hotel. Paul Ryan blocks voulunteers delivering 87,000 Petitions. On Friday afternoon, a crowd of Planned Parenthood Action Fund supporters lined the halls of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to hand-deliver over 87,000 #StandWithPP petitions to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office.
Yesterday, Ryan confirmed that the GOP would move to “defund” Planned Parenthood as part the reconciliation bill they plan to introduce soon to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known colloquially as Obamacare. Ryan reportedly sent six security guards to block the delivery of the petitions by the pink-T-shirt-clad Planned Parenthood volunteers, who waited in the halls to make their delivery of the petitions, which ask Ryan to protect funding for Planned Parenthood through Medicaid and Title X. The security guards ultimately blocked the volunteers from being able to deliver their petitions, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood told Teen Vogue. (And now, of course, there's a #PaulRyanSoScared hashtag going around on Twitter.) Check this out: GOP jams Senate confirmation blitz. Senate Republicans have heard the Democrats’ demands for a deliberate confirmation process for Donald Trump’s nominees.
But they don’t care. Story Continued Below Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s conference has scheduled six Cabinet-level confirmations hearings for next Wednesday, Jan. 11, the same day the chamber will likely slog through an all-night vote-a-rama on a budget and the president-elect will give his first press conference in six months. It’s a disastrous schedule for Senate Democrats. Republicans insist their intention is not to obscure the confirmation hearings for cabinet nominees amid a flurry of political activity. Michelle Obama gives final speech as First Lady.
In her final speech as First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama spoke about the values of hard work and a good education.
With those tools, Obama said, "you might even become president. " Obama made the speech at the 2017 School Counselor of the Year event at the White House, which she began last year. "I hope I made you proud," Obama told the audience with a quiver in her voice. The speech was directed at young people watching. President Barack Obama delivers farewell speech in Chicago. To many of us at McCormick Place on Tuesday night, it felt a lot like the end of a Chicago dream.
You know, those final, increasingly melancholy moments of reverie before someone wakes you up by screaming in your face. So what's worse? US deploys troops to Poland, Putin unenthused. The Kremlin has hit out at the biggest deployment of US troops in Europe since the end of the cold war, branding the arrival of troops and tanks in Poland as a threat to Russia’s national security.
The deployment, intended to counter what Nato portrays as Russian aggression in eastern Europe, will see US troops permanently stationed along Russia’s western border for the first time. About 1,000 of a promised 4,000 troops arrived in Poland at the start of the week, and a formal ceremony to welcome them is to be held on Saturday. Trump briefed on claims of Russian efforts to compromise him. The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump. The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. Trump Refuses to Take CNN Question in Bizarre Press Conference. During a combative, and at times bizarre, press conference in Trump Tower on Wednesday morning—his first since July 2016—Donald Trump largely avoided giving specific answers, using much of his time to berate the news media, specifically “left-wing blog” BuzzFeed.
After turning over the podium to Trump attorney Sheri Dillon, who attempted to explain exactly why and how the president-elect will navigate his business conflicts of interest once he takes office, Trump returned to take more questions from the media, in a series of exchanges that quickly turned explosive. After taking and mostly punting on questions from several reporters on his campaign’s ties to Russia and his plans for Obamacare, Trump turned to attacking BuzzFeed News again, calling the media outlet a “failing pile of garbage” for publishing an unverified dossier on Tuesday alleging that Russia has extensive compromising personal and financial information about him. “Can you give us a question, Mr. President-elect?”
Republican governors resist rush to scrap Medicaid expansions under Obamacare. Republican governors, while remaining publicly committed to ending Obamacare, are telling their congressional delegations that repealing the health-care law without an adequate replacement would ravage budgets and swamp hospitals with the uninsured.
The leaders of states such as Ohio, Nevada, Idaho and even Alabama are urging a heavy dose of caution, according to statements and letters solicited by U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. They’re warning lawmakers as President-elect Donald Trump and congressional leaders come to grips with the reality of promises to end a law Trump styled “a disaster” even as it brought insurance to 20 million Americans.
“We must be careful not to increase the rate of uninsured, particularly for our most vulnerable citizens,” Utah Governor Gary Herbert wrote in his letter.
2017 Women's March on Washington. Reps quietly end Flint water investigation. WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans quietly closed a year-long investigation into Flint, Michigan’s crisis over lead in its drinking water, faulting both state officials and the Environmental Protection Agency for contamination that has affected nearly 100,000 residents. In letters to fellow Republicans, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Friday that Michigan and federal officials were slow in detecting high levels of lead in the water and did not act fast enough once the problem was discovered.
The committee findings offer no new information and essentially summarize what emerged during several high-profile hearings earlier this year. “The committee found significant problems at Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality and unacceptable delays in the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the crisis,” wrote Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. Rep. Trump threatens Chicago w/feds unless "carnage" ends. He tweeted about the shootings there in early January, saying at the time as President-elect: "If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help.
" Tuesday night he wrote, "If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible 'carnage' going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds. " The Chicago Police Department tells CNN there have been 38 homicides and 182 shooting incidents in the city so far in 2017. Chicago Police only report homicides. They are not necessarily all shooting deaths. Trump has previously encouraged Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to ask for federal assistance. Flashy executive actions defy common sense.
President Donald Trump’s team made little effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they churned out executive actions this week, stoking fears the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal. The White House didn’t ask State Department experts to review Trump’s memorandum on the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the company that wants to build the pipeline is suing the U.S. for $15 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter. Story Continued Below Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo were “blindsided” by a draft order that would require agencies to reconsider using interrogation techniques that are currently banned as torture, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking.
2017 Executive Orders, Memorandum, Proclamations. Trump’s executive actions as of 1/25/17. President Donald Trump has spent his first days using his executive authority to rewrite American policy and undo a string of decisions made by former president Barack Obama. Here’s a running list of the new president’s executive actions: 1. Providing “relief” from the Affordable Care ActTrump’s first executive order on Inauguration Day involved “minimizing the economic burden” of the Affordable Care Act.
This order allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the heads of other departments and agencies to waive or delay the implementation of any ACA provisions that would impose a financial burden or any state or a regulatory burden on any individuals. Bannon Is Given Security Role Usually Held for Generals. WASHINGTON — The whirlwind first week of ’s presidency had all the bravura hallmarks of a Stephen K. Bannon production. It started with the doom-hued inauguration homily to “American carnage” in United States cities co-written by Mr.
Bannon, followed a few days later by his “shut up” message to the news media. The week culminated with a blizzard of executive orders, mostly hatched by Mr. Prime minister's asks Fox News to retract 'misleading' tweet.