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support for the creation of a now must figure out how to enact it. A prior nonpartisan analysis priced it at $400 billion per year — twice the state’s current budget. There appears to be no way to finance such a plan without staggering new taxes, making California a magnet for those with chronic illnesses just as its tax rates send younger, healthier Californians house-hunting in Nevada and big tech employers consider leaving the state.But Newsom is not alone. Other governors have made similar promises, and Newsom calls together the executives of the most ideologically like-minded states — Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland. What if they banded to create a sole unified single-payer health-care system, spreading risk around a much larger pool of potential patients while creating uniformity across some of the country’s wealthiest states?Fifteen end up forming an interstate compact, a well-established mechanism for working together, explicitly introduced in the Constitution. They sketch out the contours of a common health-care market: a unified single-payer regime with start-up costs funded in part by the largest issue ever to hit the municipal-bond market. The governors agree, as well, on a uniform payroll tax and a new tax on millionaires and corporations set to the same rate with revenues earmarked for health-care costs. The Trump administration has already proved willing to grant waivers to states looking to experiment beyond the Affordable Care Act’s standards — primarily for the benefit of those seeking to offer plans on their exchanges with skimpier coverage. But the states can’t act unilaterally: The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress must approve establishment of any compact claiming authority that previously resided with the federal government.Newsom pressures his friend House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi to introduce a bill that would give the compact all federal money that flows into its constituent states for health-care costs. Pelosi’s members from Arizona and Florida balk at the proposal, which they fear would enable their states’ Republican governors to gut Obamacare protections. But there are scores more from states looking to join the compact, and their governors marshal Democratic House delegations into a bloc. The bill passes the House, with the support of tea-party Republicans eager to strike a blow against federal power.When it reaches the Senate, the initiative comes from Republicans. In 2011, then–Texas governor Rick Perry championed a Health Care Compact Alliance, joined by eight other states seeking a “regulatory shield” against the Affordable Care Act and full control over their Medicare and Medicaid funds. By the time the Democratic bill passes the House, current Texas governor Greg Abbott has rallied more than 20 states, including North Carolina, Missouri, and Arizona, for a new version of the Health Care Compact. He also has the support of two prominent senators, Ted Cruz and Majority Whip John Cornyn. Republicans who had promised for nearly a decade to repeal and replace Obamacare can finally deliver on the promise — for 40 percent of the country.The president sees opportunity, too. While running for president, Donald Trump called himself “Mr. Brexit,” a boast tied to his apocryphal claim of having accurately predicted the British vote to leave the European Union. Now he’s convinced, thanks largely to a Fox & Friends chyron reading BIGGER THAN BREXIT?, that an even more significant world-historical accomplishment is within reach. Trump lobbies Pelosi and Mitch McConnell to combine their bills. Trump beams at the Rose Garden signing ceremony, calling it “the biggest deal ever” as he goads Pelosi and McConnell into an awkward handshake. Historians will later mark it as the first step in our nation’s slow breakup, the conscious uncoupling of these United States.Let’s just admit that this arranged marriage isn’t really working anymore, is it? The partisan dynamic in Washington may have changed, but our dysfunctional, codependent relationship is still the same. The midterm results have shown that Democrats have become even more a party of cities and upscale suburbs whose votes are inefficiently packed into dense geographies, Republicans one of exurbs and rural areas overrepresented in the Senate. The new Congress will be more ideologically divided than any before it, according to a scoring system developed by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica: the Republicans more conservative, the Democrats more liberal.Come January, we are likely to find that we’ve simply shifted to another gear of a perpetual deadlock unlikely to satisfy either side. For the past eight years, there has been no movement toward goals with broad bipartisan support: to fund new infrastructure projects, or for basic gun-control measures like background checks or limits on bump stocks. Divided party control of Capitol Hill will make other advances even less likely. For the near future, the boldest policy proposals are likely to be rollbacks: Democrats angling to revert to a pre-Trump tax code, Republicans to repeal Obama’s health-care law. By December 7, Congress will have to pass spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. Next March looms another deadline to raise the debt ceiling.Meanwhile, we have discovered that too many of our good-governance guardrails, from avoidance of nepotism to transparency around candidates’ finances, have been affixed by adhesion to norms rather than force of law. The breadth and depth of the dysfunction has even Establishmentarian figures ready to concede that our current system of governance is fatally broken. Some have entertained radical process reforms that would have once been unthinkable. Prominent legal academics on both the left and the right have endorsed proposals to expand the Supreme Court or abolish lifetime tenure for its members, the latter of which has been embraced by Justice Stephen Breyer. Republican senators including Cruz and Mike Lee have pushed to end direct election of senators, which they say strengthens the federal government at the expense of states’ interests.Policy wonks across the spectrum are starting to rethink the federal compact altogether, allowing local governments to capture previously unforeseen responsibilities. Yuval Levin, a policy adviser close to both Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, wrote in 2016 that “the absence of easy answers is precisely a reason to empower a multiplicity of problem-solvers throughout our society, rather than hoping that one problem-solver in Washington gets it right.” In a recent book, The New Localism, center-left urbanists Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak exalt such local policy innovation specifically as a counterweight to the populism that now dominates national politics across the Americas and Europe.Even if they don’t use the term, states’ rights has become a cause for those on the left hoping to do more than the federal government will. Both Jacobin and The Nation have praised what the latter calls “Progressive Federalism.” San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera has called it “the New New Federalism,” a callback to Ronald Reagan’s first-term promise to reduce Washington’s influence over local government. “All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government,” Reagan said in his 1981 inaugural address. At the time, Democrats interpreted New Federalism as high-minded cover for a strategy of dismantling New Deal and Great Society programs. Now they see it as their last best hope for a just society.Some states have attempted to enforce their own citizenship policies, with a dozen permitting undocumented immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses and nearly twice as many to allow them to qualify for in-state tuition. Seven states, along with a slew of municipal governments, have adopted “sanctuary” policies of official noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Many governors, including Republicans in Massachusetts and Maryland, have refused to deploy National Guard troops to support Trump’s border policies, and California has sued the federal government to block construction of a wall along the Mexican frontier. After the Trump administration stopped defending an Obama-era Labor Department rule to expand the share of workers entitled to overtime pay, Washington State announced it would enforce its own version of the rule and advised its peers to do the same. “It is now up to states to fortify workers through strong overtime protections,” Washington governor Jay Inslee wrote last week.In California, officials who regularly boast of overseeing the world’s fifth-largest economy have begun to talk of advancing their own foreign policy. After Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, Governor Jerry Brown — he has said “we are a separate nation in our own minds” — crossed the Pacific to negotiate a bilateral carbon-emissions pact with Chinese president Xi Jinping. “It’s true I didn’t come to Washington, I came to Beijing,” said Brown, who is often received like a head of state when he travels abroad. Around the same time, Brown promised a gathering of climate scientists that the federal government couldn’t entirely kill off their access to research data. “If Trump turns off the satellites,” he said, “California will launch its own damn satellite.”Brown’s successor Newsom comes to office just as Californians may be forced to reckon with how much farther they are willing to take this ethic of self-reliance. Since 2015, a group of California activists have been circulating petitions to give citizens a direct vote on whether they want to turn California into “a free, sovereign and independent country,” which could trigger a binding 2021 referendum on the question already being called “Calexit.”During the Obama years, it was conservatives who’d previously talked of states’ rights who began toying with the idea of starting their own countries. “We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it,” Rick Perry said at a tea-party rally in 2009, before adding: “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?” Perry’s lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, met with members of the Texas Nationalist Movement on the opening day of a legislative session. Right after this year’s midterms, the would-be leaders of the breakaway republics of Texas and California met at a secessionist conference in Dallas.In 2012, the White House website received secession petitions from all 50 states; Texas’s was the most popular, with more than 125,000 signatures. (A counterpetition demanded that any citizen who signed one of the secession petitions be deported.) Two years later, Reuters found that nearly one-quarter of Americans said they supported the idea of their states breaking away, a position most popular among Republicans and rural westerners.Liberal regions have tended to go bigger with their secession fantasies: Why spin off one’s own state when you could split the whole country and gain the resources and manpower of like-minded compatriots? After John Kerry’s loss in the 2004 election, a homemade digital graphic migrated across the pre-social internet. On it, the states that had cast their electoral votes for Kerry were labeled “the United States of Canada”; George W. Bush’s became “Jesusland.” After Trump’s victory, those memes graduated into op-eds, including from others who would have to acquiesce in the fantasy. “Is it time for Canada to annex Blue America?” a columnist in the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s asked last year.The fact that anyone with Photoshop can cogently cleave the country in two is a credit to the hardening of a once-fluid political map. Over half the states have cast their Electoral College votes consistently for one party in every presidential election since 2000. In 2016, those states all picked Senate winners from the same party as their presidential picks as well. But as three British geographers concluded in a 2016 article about spatial polarization, that’s not just a feature of the Electoral College map. Whether measured by county, state, or region, the partisan divide has grown since Bill Clinton’s first election: Red places have grown redder (at least in their presidential votes), blue places bluer. In 1992, 38 percent of Americans lived in “landslide counties,” which went for a presidential candidate by a margin of 20 percentage points or more, the Times has reported; in 2016, the number reached 60 percent.This partisan homogeneity is shaping state governments too. Thirty-six capitals are now dominated by a single party that controls the governorship along with both houses of a legislature; for the first time in more than a century, only one state legislature in the country, Minnesota’s, will be split between two parties. If we are already living in two political geographies, why not generate a system of government to match?Or so goes the fantasy. There’s no real groundswell of support for shrinking the United States. Surveys have shown that two-thirds of Californians oppose independence, and not only because the Calexit movement’s lefty critiques of Trump do not align with its righty origins. (A co-founder of the California Independence Campaign, Louis Marinelli, is a former anti-gay-marriage activist who last year sought permanent residence in Russia.) When a candidate from the Alaskan Independence Party, which had been founded with secessionist ambitions, actually won the governorship in 1990, he turned out to be tepid on the question of sovereignty. (Sarah Palin once attended an AIP conference, and her husband, Todd, became a member.) Local movements elsewhere, whether the left-leaning Second Vermont Republic or South Carolina’s right-leaning Third Palmetto Republic, have never transcended stunt. Among institutions, only the Libertarian Party has ever endorsed the position that states should be freely able to secede.History gives us few examples of successful peaceful secessions. In the ones we do have, national identity rather than ideological differences seem to be at the root of the fissure. (The Confederate States of America would have been a notable anomaly.) When states split in the 20th century, the Australia-based scholars Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic have pointed out, there were always deep underlying fault lines of language, religion, or ethnicity. None of the three multinational states created between the two world wars — the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia — survived until the end of the 20th century.Even with widespread fatalism about the American project, there is not an obvious way to dissolve our union. Rewriting the Constitution’s balance of power would require levels of political coordination that seem far beyond the country’s existing leadership. Chances of a civil war are remote, and it is hard to visualize a series of events that could prompt a peaceable dissolution of the union. After the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that states have no right to unilaterally secede. The U.N. Charter recognizes the “self-determination of peoples,” but clearly intends the latter to mean well-defined racial or ethnic groups and not, say, a collection of persons who want stronger gun-control measures. Other countries might be wary of recognizing spinoff American states for fear of the precedent. Would China vote to admit California to the United Nations if it set up Tibet or Taiwan to demand the same treatment?And yet, if the desire to secede were to grow, recent votes in Scotland and Quebec have modeled the way that secession in a developed country during years of peace can become just another political question — one debated relatively civilly, voted on democratically, without attendant allegations of treason or sedition. (Spain’s government has been less forgiving of what it calls an unconstitutional independence referendum held last year in Catalonia.)There is at least one mechanism by which a sort of soft breakup may be imaginable — and it’s already found within the Constitution. The document introduces the prospect of one state entering into a compact with another. States have created interstate compacts to maintain common standards, like the Driver’s License Compact that 47 DMVs use to exchange knowledge on traffic scofflaws. Most have been used for neighboring jurisdictions to handle common resources, like the Atlantic Salmon Compact that permits New England states to manage fish stocks in the Connecticut River Basin. (Eleven states have signed on to a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to disregard the Electoral College, but it would require a number equal to 270 electoral votes to take effect.)Interstate compacts have rarely been applied to controversial topics. Yet to a paralyzed Congress, and a president without any deeply held views about state-federal relations, they could prove an appealing vehicle to restless factions on both the left and the right. It may be time to take the country apart and put it back together, into a shape that better aligns with the divergent, and increasingly irreconcilable, political preferences of its people — or at least to consider what such a future might look like, if for no other reason than to test our own resolve. An imagined trial separation, if you will. Or perhaps in contemplating a future apart we might stumble upon a few ideas for some new way to live together after all.So let’s return to our hypothetical spring of 2019. After Governor Newsom’s successful health-care deal, lobbyists and think tanks promote compacts for all their pet issues, and Congress — which would be unable to find bicameral majorities for any other substantive legislation — obliges. The Public Lands and Environmental Compact Act gives the states huge leeway to set environmental regulations and manage national parks on their lands, and the Labor and Workplace Compact Act permits states to draft new workplace and employment standards. There’s a Housing Compact Act, an Immigration Compact Act, and an Agriculture Compact Act, which allows the states to take all the money that would come to their citizens as farm subsidies and food stamps as block grants with the ability to set their own rules. Trump giddily signs them all.While the states could generate new partnerships for each policy area, they choose to harden their alliances. As they link their safety nets, the Newsom-led states agree to fully synchronize their tax codes so that they could end a race-to-the-bottom competition for residents and companies. Once they do, Nevada pulls out from the compact, unwilling to implement an income tax on its citizens. Washington, on the other hand, quickly amends its state constitution to permit an income tax for the first time.Seeking his own symbol of integration, Abbott unveils the new Free States Open-Carry Permit, along with new laws ensuring the right to bear arms in schools, churches, and government buildings across his alliance. Newsom and Abbott jointly lobby Congress to grant them the right to manage the Social Security funds generated by workers in their regions. Abbott wants to allow citizens to control their retirement portfolio, while Newsom wants to experiment with moving some trust-fund money from the Treasury bonds to new public-investment vehicles that will support climate-friendly technology.To kick off the Federation Era, the two governors meet on the steps of the United States Supreme Court for a photo op. Shaking hands, the men and their attorneys general pledge not to support any legal challenge to the other’s authority for two decades. All sides have an interest in permitting their new experiment to play out for a while without any unnecessary uncertainty from the courts. The states can’t stop others from suing over the constitutionality of their moves, but they want to send a message to a conservative Supreme Court that state officials are channeling the political will of 250 million Americans, all with Congress’s express consent.The most vocal opposition comes from fixtures of the Washington, D.C., Establishment and permanent bureaucracy, which fear a permanent loss of power. Both Fox News and MSNBC, on the other hand, herald the New Era of Good Feelings. For the first time ever, Gallup records three in four Americans declaring themselves satisfied with the way things are going in the United States — a supermajority that cuts across partisan and demographic divides.Over the first two decades of the Federation Era, the alliances remained relatively stable, with only occasional changes in state status. Virginia quit the Progressive Federation of America early because it felt it would lose leverage to defend the interests of the federal employees who live there. Montana nearly pulled out of the Alliance of Free States when it looked like it might be forced to abandon its closed-shop work rules to match its right-to-work sister states. Florida’s internal politics are driven by perpetual debate over whether the state stood to benefit by joining either federation; Alaska no longer has a Democratic Party and Republican Party but has entirely realigned along a Pro-Fed and Anti-Fed axis.The states that did not join a federation remained governed by Washington, where largely status-quo policies from the early-21st-century remain in place. Some are in the neutral zone, as it is known, owing to principled independent-mindedness (New Hampshire), some by ideological paralysis (Wisconsin), and some because they are happy setting their own rules (Delaware). Power, however, resides in the neutral zone. Since each of the two federations cast Electoral College votes as a bloc, by tacit understanding, any viable national candidate has to hail from the unaffiliated states. (After producing four in a row, Maine changed its official slogan to “Mother of Vice-Presidents.”) Yet with the Legislative and Executive branches largely hobbled from policy-making for much of the country, this offers minor satisfaction. It is said to be a bleak joke around the White House that the only job of the president in peacetime is to inquire daily about the health of the Supreme Court’s oldest member.By 2038, the Progressive Federation of America is being run from a former administrative building on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The federation was initially governed by commissioners appointed by governors and state legislatures. To avoid establishing a permanent bureaucracy, the governors refused to establish a dedicated base, instead rotating its chairmanship across the members for a year at a time. Lobbyists loved having the capital in San Francisco, were less enthused when New York decided it could boost the local economy by chairing its meetings in Buffalo.The abandoned campus in Albuquerque is an inadvertent monument to one of the Blue Fed’s earliest successes. The federation’s state universities initially integrated to secure basic economies of scope and scale: linking their library collections and banding together in search of greater buying power for their energy needs. After a few years, the states agreed to set in-Fed tuition for all public universities to zero. New Mexico took the boldest step. It dismantled its public-university system after determining it was more efficient to cover travel expenses for New Mexicans studying in California or Colorado than to manage its own schools, even continuing to pay lifetime salaries for its tenured professors when they were placed in jobs at new sister schools. The New Mexico regents decided to deplete the remainder of the university’s $450 million endowment to dramatically increase teacher pay for the state’s primary-school teachers. New Mexico’s public high schools are now seen as some of the country’s finest.At first, the task of the Federation commissioners was framed as simple technocracy, implementing the will of state governments. They strengthened regulations to protect workers and set a uniform $18 minimum wage across the zone, with some cost-of-living adjustments to raise the sum in New York, San Francisco, and Boston. Federation taxes have steadily risen as federal rates fell to cover its reduced obligations. Many wealthy Blue Fed residents now pay more in annual taxes to the federation than to Washington. The high-quality cradle-to-grave services those taxes fund have come to define existence across the Blue Fed, from guaranteed public preschool to lifelong medical coverage with no co-pays or deductibles, and have incubated a highly skilled workforce and some of the most impressive life-expectancy rates in the world. (Dental care continues to depend on a system of private insurance.) It was a source of pride when the Blue Fed’s generous higher-education system started drawing large numbers of middle-class families to leave southern cities for northern ones.As soon as one crosses the border into the Alliance of Free States, whether over the Wabash River from Illinois to Indiana, or the grasslands that stretch across the Iowa-Missouri border, the difference between the two federations’ sense of identity becomes immediately visible. A popular decal showing an outline of the Red Fed’s borders — with a column of prairie states rising like an extended middle finger from the clenched fist of Texas — resides on bumpers and car windows as a defiant declaration of a newly defined region’s honor.Over the first decade of its existence, Red Fed leaders found their purpose unwinding the domestic reforms of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama and with them much of the 20th-century regulatory state. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration all saw their staffs gutted, left incapable of enforcing whatever rules did remain on the books. An alphabet soup of government agencies, Bill Kristol tweeted, had become a savory bone broth.The National Labor Relations Board withered in the Red Fed, along with New Deal rules that blocked companies from interfering in employee efforts to win collective-bargaining power. The shift set off a return to the fierce business-labor battles of the Gilded Age, most visible in the emergence of new firms founded by Blackwater and Black Cube alumni, known as the Blackertons, that specialize in aggressive digital surveillance and online-misinformation campaigns against union organizers.The effective elimination of most environmental and employment regulations proved irresistible to manufacturers. Boeing announced it would stop making capital investments in its Seattle-area factory and begin to shift jet assembly to a new plant in Covington, Kentucky. Factories relocated from China to be closer to the American consumer market and avoid import tariffs. Unemployment in parts of the Red Fed fell below 2 percent and the region briefly reached 5 percent growth — each several times better than Blue Fed indicators — leading conservative economists to praise the Red Miracle.It was not just manufacturing and resource extraction that boomed in the Red Fed. As soon as the Blue Fed established its single-payer system, medical specialists began taking their practices to states where they wouldn’t be subject to the Regional Health Service’s price controls or rationing. Sloan Kettering now treats New York as little more than an administrative base; the majority of its hospital rooms are in Texas. Johns Hopkins considered closing its medical school when nearly half the faculty decamped en masse to Baylor. Wealthy Blue Fed residents willing to pay out of pocket now invariably travel to Houston when they want an immediate appointment with a specialist of their choice. The arrivals area at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport is packed with chauffeurs from van services run by clinics supported by specializing in such medical tourism.Auctions of public lands across the interior west, along with the privatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, generated a quick gusher of cash. Vowing not to let the new government wealth create more bureaucracy, Red Fed leaders deposited it all in a Free States Energy Trust Fund that would pay out an annual dividend to every adult and child in the region — a no-strings-attached cash transfer of hundreds of dollars per year. The Southern Baptist Convention encouraged its members to tithe their dividend checks directly into new aid societies to help the least fortunate. The most popular charitable cause has been a relief society to aid religious conservatives in the Blue Fed seeking to migrate to the Red Fed.The boom in manufacturing and energy jobs on one side of the border and the guarantee of free government-sponsored education and medical care on the other created an incentive for families to split — with one spouse working (and paying taxes) in the Red Fed and the other, usually with children in tow, collecting benefits in the Blue Fed. (Remo, which pitched its app to investors as “Venmo for remittances,” became the fastest-growing tech company on the Fortune 500.) Sociologists are starting to worry that what they call the “split-family phenomenon” will become a hallmark of 21st-century life in North America, with its effects growing more pronounced as federation policies continue to diverge.Reaction to Blue Fed culture drives much Red Fed governance. When the Blue Fed opened a gleaming new visitor center at Yosemite, the Red Fed moved to privatize all the concessions at Yellowstone. The Blue Fed’s expansive affirmative-action protocols inspired the Red Fed to abolish all HBCU-specific education programs so that primarily white institutions could compete equally for the funds. After Illinois led a Blue Fed initiative to upgrade its rail service, the Red Fed ended all cooperation with Amtrak, even adjusting gauge size along the Mississippi River to prevent passage of passenger trains from one side to another. As a backlash to the Blue Fed’s net-neutrality rule, the Red Fed imposed the Online Fairness Doctrine, which permits internet providers to slow upload and download speeds for content they determined was in violation of “community standards” or that offends a company’s religious beliefs. Across large swaths of the Red Fed, the only way to log into Grindr is via VPN.These culture-war skirmishes instilled a strong sense of Red Fed identity, and the economy was doing so well that few noticed the slow exodus of tech entrepreneurs and high-skilled creative professionals who had once clustered in Austin and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Only when the Supreme Court ruled that a compact-wide abortion ban did not place an undue burden on reproductive freedom because Red Fed residents could travel for free services in the Blue Fed did it become evident that conservative social policy would impede efforts to diversify the Red Fed economy beyond natural resources and heavy manufacturing. Amazon’s list of candidate cities to house its HQ14 did not include a single one in the Red Fed.Each federation is the other’s largest trading partner, but they increasingly assume the posture of rivals. When the Blue Fed imposed a controversial excise tax on all products or services generated by companies that could not prove they paid their employees at least $18 per hour, the Red Fed saw it as a de facto tariff on its goods. It retaliated by placing its own excise tax on domestic wine, which led the Red Fed to deepen its trade ties with Chile and Argentina. That was a short-term diversion, but prompted a deeper examination of how economically dependent one federation had grown on the other’s internal policies. A Blue Fed requirement that certain freight classes travel only by all-electric truck fleets had nearly doubled the cost of transporting products to the interior west. Frequent work stoppages by West Coast longshoremen emboldened by their labor-friendly administration affirmed a strategy agreed to by titans of Red Fed industry: They needed their own Pacific port.Red Fed leaders negotiated a deal with Mexican authorities for operating control of the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas, in Michoacán state, investing some of its energy trust funds. A new terminal, staffed by American Customs officials, connects directly with a spur of the Kansas City Southern railroad. There, nonunion laborers load ships with minerals mined through the American West, including lithium and soda ash, heading largely to East Asia, and unload bananas and smartphones from Ecuador and China heading for the landlocked states of the Red Fed without ever once passing through Blue Fed territory.And then came the first humanitarian crisis. When the families of West Virginia workers started overloading schools and hospitals across the border in Hagerstown, Maryland, the Blue Fed began to impose residence requirements for many of its social services. That didn’t stop the migrants, but it led them to cluster in border towns as they waited out the six months required for eligibility. The conditions were often dire. Tent cities around Palm Springs saw the first American measles outbreak in a generation, and in the Spokane bidonvilles, dozens of children froze to death during a harsh winter.Those tragedies set off a reckoning that has prompted an identity crisis for the Blue Fed’s leaders and citizens. On one side, fiscal experts say the Nordic-style welfare state that the Blue Fed has established is unsustainable if it just ends up as an unchecked provider of services to some of the Red Fed’s neediest cases. On the other side, some of the progressive activists who played crucial roles building early support for the health-care compact argue that the Blue Fed has an obligation to promote its values even beyond its borders. The debate rages across the region: What obligation do they have to other Americans who have democratically chosen to pursue a very different way of life?The federations had a gentlemen’s agreement not to drag federal authorities into their disagreements, but the nature of their conflicts made that impossible. Once the Blue Fed declared itself a “sanctuary region” and invited undocumented immigrants elsewhere in the United States to seek refuge, Red Fed leaders threatened to erect internal border controls on state lines. The Blue Fed backed down, publicly revoking its invitation, but only after the Red Fed agreed to jointly lobby Congress to create a series of regionally restricted work visas.The federal government remains the enforcer of the country’s citizenship laws, agent of its foreign affairs, controller of its national defense, and manager of its monetary policy. But it grew increasingly impossible to perform any of those roles neutrally, and many of the country’s democratic institutions were not designed to balance the competing interests of two geopolitical rivals.When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to stop the Red Fed’s economy from overheating, it pushed the rest of the country into recession, prompting the Great Lakes to lead the first successful campaign to have the Federal Reserve Board removed from office. When Hurricane Rigoberto came through the Gulf of Mexico, leaving large portions of Houston underwater for months — the first trillion-dollar natural disaster, at least when the cost of the subsequent malaria outbreak is included — the Red Fed demanded a bailout from the federal government. Blue Fed politicians said it would be “moral hazard” to do so, given that most of the damage was traced to a Red Fed decision to privatize the Houston Ship Channel and entrust the buyer, a Qatari sovereign-wealth fund, with upkeep of the Galveston Seawall and the levee networks of surrounding southeastern Texas counties.The Pentagon lost its authority to act as a nonaligned arbiter of the national interest. Once cartels seized control of the Red Fed’s Mexican container port, taking hostage 17 retired Texas Rangers working on a private security force, the Defense secretary mobilized West Coast National Guard units to support an Army Rapid Deployment Force, along with Marines and Navy seals. Oregon’s governor balked, announcing that he would not permit his troops to “be used as muscle for the Red Fed’s imperial adventures.” The Supreme Court ruled that National Guard units had to follow the commander-in-chief’s orders, and the Oregon guardsmen headed south, but the incident polarized foreign-policy positions in new ways. When, months later, intelligence agencies issued a report pinning the crash of the western renewable-energy grid on a North Korean cyberattack, Red Fed cities saw some of their largest mass protests in years, all against a rush to war. Nearly 100,000 people gathered in Indianapolis’s Monument Circle, chanting “No blood for solar.” By the time of the South China Sea Crisis, Congress had grown so paralyzed along federation lines that it was impossible to assemble a majority in favor of any declaration of war.Leaders overseas have become eager to exploit what they see as the United States’s political weakness. As concerns about climate change have grown more dire, other countries have become intent on punishing dissenters from the international order, and the Red Fed is now a global villain. The European Union agreed to pre-clear for entry all crops produced under the Blue Fed’s GMO-free agriculture policy, while Red Fed imports are subjected to a lengthy and costly quarantine. China announced most-favored-region trade policies that would give Blue Fed exporters an advantage over domestic rivals when selling into the Chinese market.These trade-related conflicts squeeze Illinois, which wants to export Caterpillar tractors to China under favorable conditions but lags behind West Coast and New England states in transitioning to GMO-free agriculture. Although a founding member of the Blue Fed, Illinois at times felt geographically isolated, surrounded by Red Fed or neutral states. Illinois withdrew from the Blue Fed and helped to form the Great Lakes Federation, which stretches from Philadelphia to Des Moines and up to Duluth, with a permanent capital in Chicago. As the 20-year judicial truce is about to expire, the Midwest controls the balance of power in a Congress that may be forced by the Supreme Court to revisit some of its earliest assumptions about returning power to the states.There is another real-life contemporary example of a semi-secession: Brexit. It, too, began as little more than a thought experiment. What if we could reject a far-off governing structure that no longer seems responsive to our interests in favor of local authority that can more closely match our aspirations and sense of identity as a people? There must have been something thrilling about getting to cast a vote for self-determination.Yet those who are now forced to make that reverie real are pulling back from their former self-confidence about it. Just last week, the Tory official serving as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union admitted he “hadn’t quite understood the full extent” to which British commerce was “particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,” and that new trade barriers could impact the availability of consumer goods in stores. Instead of just leaving Europe, as he encouraged his compatriots to do during the 2016 campaign, Dominic Raab now insists on “a bespoke arrangement on goods which recognizes the peculiar, frankly, geographic, economic entity that is the United Kingdom.”As it was for a majority of Britons, it is easier to imagine breaking up the United States than figuring out how to make it work — whether through bold new policies or merely a functioning version of consensus politics. The seeming inelasticity of our system of governance also guarantees a security and predictability that we take for granted. Some of the lessons Europe is being taught under the stress of the Brexit crisis — that a single currency requires a unified economy, or that a lack of internal borders can’t work if no one can agree on what should happen at the outer one — are ones Americans might better learn from fantasy than from experience.

Yes, she does. She is angry and miserable. She has mental issues. She seemed to have everything but her life was in fact not a fairy tale as one might have thought. In addition , she is selfish , yet she has very low self esteem , she lacks self control and discipline , she was ambitious , yet , not hard working , she clearly lacked charisma and any kind of talent , yet, she pursued a music career , she was raised to be spoiled and entitled , she is prone to anything addictive , she no doubt made wrong choices and mistakes she refused to take responsibility for but chose to blame everyone else instead and she grew up in the shadow of a super star father and a gorgeous mother but she was neither.Lisa Marie Presley was born on February 01 1968. She is now 51 years old. She is the daughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley , nee Wagner but later changed to her step father’s name Beaulieu. Lisa Marie Presley was born in Memphis exactly 9 months after her parents’ marriage in Las Vegas on 1 May 1967 . Elvis was 24 when he met 14 year old Priscilla. A 14-year old Priscilla Beaulieu, whose step father was an officer in the U.S. Air Force and stationed nearby in Weisbaden, was hanging around the Eagle Club, the local military canteen, when she was spotted by Currie Grant, an airman first class in the Air Force and the club’s assistant manager. Priscilla wanted to meet Elvis and Currie was willing to set that up.Her mother said her and Elvis never had sex until they got married but from the moment she moved to Graceland she slept in his room. According to Suzanne Finstand however they had sex on the second date and Priscilla promised sexual favors in exchange for meeting Elvis to Currie Grant , a 27 year old man who knew Elvis. Priscilla later sued Grant for defamation and won but the author and the publisher of the book ‘’Child Bride’’ were not sued. Priscilla on the other hand said her and Elvis did everything but have sex before they married and Elvis would take half naked pictures of her. It is said that the ONLY reason her father Elvis married her mother Priscilla was due to her age and everyone telling him if he didn't marry her her parents would go to the press. He was over her pretty quick once she moved to Graceland and started nagging and questioning his every move. However, after Presley’s parents divorced her father went downhill.Lisa Marie’s parents got a divorce 3 years later and she moved to California with her mother Priscilla who left her father because Priscilla had an affair with at least two men, one of whom was Mike Stone, Elvis’ karate instructor . Priscilla left Elvis for Mike Stone who also left his wife for Priscilla. Elvis wanted to kill Mike Stone then but eventually he didn’t. Priscilla claimed that right when she asked Elvis for a divorce he raped her but she later recanted her story. ‘He grabbed me and forcefully made love to me’, she wrote in her book. ‘It was uncomfortable and unlike any other time he’d ever made love to me before.'Her mother Priscilla claimed that Elvis raped her in her book that was supposed to be dedicated to "Lisa Marie" (who was sixteen at the time when the book was released). Why would any sane mother write a book dedicated to their daughter and add that their father raped (her mother) ? Priscilla also wrote in the book that when she found out she was pregnant she wanted to have an abortion. It was also said that Priscilla rode horses (and falling from one) and motorcycles up until her due date while she was pregnant. Priscilla did admit she intentionally starved herself during pregnancy. In the book Elvis and Me,Priscilla said she went on a diet after becoming pregnant. Elvis told her that women used pregnancy as an excuse to let themselves go. So Priscilla lived on apples and hard boiled eggs. She bragged that by the time Lisa was born she had actually lost weight. The author of the book said she wanted to self- abort. Priscilla wrote about Lisa ‘s fatherI was so young and naive at the time, there was just no way I could have made a success of that marriage. I realized I couldn't give him the kind of adulation he got from his fans, and he needed that adulation desperately. Without it he was nothing. I'll tell you why I have no lines: Elvis used to used to slap me in the forehead every time I looked up. I'd be sitting in the kitchen doing my homework, and I'd look up at Elvis - like this - and he'd tap me on the forehead. He'd tell me not to use my forehead to look up, only to use my eyes. Pow! I still feel his hand there. I've never had Botox, any of that, in my forehead.Elvis, a notorious womanizer, cheated non stop on Priscilla and he lost sexual interest in her as soon as they got married , especially after she gave birth. Her mother Priscilla said that after she had Lisa Marie she and Elvis stopped having sex. Elvis treated Priscilla like a Madonna/mother figure and would not touch her after she had their daughter, Lisa Marie, in 1968. Priscilla said that after she gave birth Elvis did not want to ever have sex with her again. She said he had some very "weird" notions about women and sex and was extremely close to his mother Gladys. Elvis met Lisa Marie ‘s mother Priscilla in 1959 in Germany when she was only 14 years old where he was doing his military service. He dated Anita Wood then who overheard Elvis tell his father Vernon he was torn between her and Priscilla , even though the latter was only 14 at the time , and Wood broke up with Elvis , when she found a letter from Priscilla begging Elvis to bring her over from Germany for a visit. Lisa’s father Elvis asked Priscilla’s parents’ permission to let her move in with him , who , needless to say , agreed even though Priscilla was only 16 at the time , because he was Elvis. Elvis had many adulterous relationships which everyone knew about,including Priscilla, with actress Anna Margaret , his Viva Las Vegas co star, being the one whom Priscilla, Lisa ‘s mother, admitted she feared the most and broke a vase when she found out about their affair. Allegedly, Presley had not wanted to marry Priscilla and told Lamar Fike that he ‘didn’t pull out in time’. In the seventh month of her pregnancy, he suggested a ‘trial separation’ in the deteriorating marriage. Seeing her shock, he dropped the subject.When Lisa Marie was brought to Graceland to hang with her daddy, she loved to ride a golf cart down to the gate and sign autographs for the fans, ‘F*** you, Lisa Marie Presley’. She was seven at the time. Lisa Marie lost her father at the age of 9 in 1977 . She was in Graceland when Elvis , who had serious health problems( diabetes , constipation , glaucoma , hypertension) , died in 1977 at the age of only 42. Elvis was constipated and he literally died on the toilet. The autopsy showed he was full of feces . Constipation is a side effect of severe drug use. Pathologists performing the autopsy discovered five feet of Elvis’ lower colon was distended and blocked with chalky, whitish fecal matter. He had not moved his bowels for some time, a process that occurs with the excessive use of ‘downers’. Lisa Marie broke the news to Linda Thompson , Elvis’ previous girlfriend , on the phone. Her father Elvis dated Thompson in the 70's during the era where he was stuck in Vegas . Linda Thompson was her father ‘s girlfriend from 1972-1976. Ginger Alden , Elvis ‘last girlfriend , found him dead in the bathroom and Lisa Marie was visiting her father in Graceland then , which her mother Priscilla later turned into a tourist attraction, an income Presley , who is now reportedly in debt , relies on as in 2005, after a few bad business moves, she decided to sell 85 percent of the stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises to pay off debts to the tune of 25 million $ and in 2016 during legal proceedings from her acrimonious divorce with her fourth husband, unemployed musician , Michael Lockwood she revealed she was at least 16 million dollars in debt , another 500.000 $ in credit debt and down on her last 14000$ in her bank account. The court ordered her to pay Lockwood’s 100.000 $ legal expenses but she will not have to pay him the 40.000 $ spousal support , which he demanded even though he signed a prenup , because he claimed his attorney , who is now deceased , did not explain to him thoroughly the terms of their prenuptial agreement then. Priscilla was the one who literally saved Graceland, it was said when Elvis died he was in a lot of debt, some in his inner circle felt that since they were divorced that Priscilla shouldn't have any claims but if she didn't take over when she did Elvis would not have been worth what he is now, if she didn't take over and straighten it out. Lisa fritterd away all of that Elvis $ on husbands, clothes, gifts, jewelry, her 'church', boats.At the time of his death, Elvis’ fortune had dwindled to just $5 million, mostly due to years of overspending and financial mismanagement. On her 25th birthday in 1993, Lisa Marie, who is also a spendaholic like her late father , inherited Elvis’ estate, which, thanks largely to the stewardship of her mother, Priscilla, had grown to an estimated $US100 million . Priscilla was pointedly left OUT of Elvis's will. The estate was left to Lisa Marie with Elvis's father Vernon as executor and Vernon having the right to appoint future executors in his own will. Priscilla then badgered Vernon for the appointment and he somewhat relented quite near to his death, appointing Priscilla one of THREE co-executors (one executor being an entire bank). Priscilla in no way built up Graceland single handedly. However she was integral to the critical decision to keep and open Graceland. That business had an impatiently waiting customer based without any other action on her part.Priscilla and all the co-executors were conned by Parker, just as Elvis had been, and continued and initiated bad deals with him until they were ordered to halt this activity by the probate court, based on charges initiated by the Guardian Ad Litem the court had appointed to protect Lisa Marie's interests. So Priscilla worked herself into Vernon Presley's will under the guise of protecting Lisa but actually it was the court that stepped in and did that job. Of course they didn't stop Priscilla from enrolling Lisa in a Scientology school. Neither Priscilla or Lisa run the estate now, they sold the rights to all things of Elvis. However Lisa still owns the Graceland property itself and the personal affects. Priscilla gets paid significant consulting fees to show up as the face of the estate. Lisa Marie Presley was owner and chairman of the board until 2005, when she sold 85 per cent of the estate’s business holdings, excluding his expansive property Graceland, which she kept. She now claims he vast fortune is gone.Lisa Marie Presley is yet another shining example of a millionaire who owes it all to the name of her pioneering father. Daughter of rock and roll icon Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie has done very little to keep the legend alive, choosing instead to command respect on account of her family name. Though she has made some original music, she is far from entertainer her father once was, yet still enjoys a place in the spotlight and a fortune in her name.Lisa Marie met her 4th husband Michael Lockwood in 2002 and they became romantically involved after her divorce from Nicolas Cage on 25/11/2002. Lockwood was engaged with another woman , named Shelley Maxwell, at the time but Lisa Marie did not seem to care much. Lockwood’s ex fiancee Shelley Maxwell clearly blasted Lisa Marie Presley for wrecking her wedding dreams after reportedly stealing her fiancee, who literally left her at the altar for Lisa Marie ‘s sake , who has been his meal ticket since."I don't want to believe that Michael was cheating on me with Lisa Marie but friends say I should wake up and smell the coffee. He had been touring with Lisa Marie for almost a year and it's hard to have a relationship when one person is gone all the time. We had been living together for six years and were planning our wedding in March 2003. But there were issues between us that finally became unsolvable. When Lisa dumps him, Michael shouldn't think he's coming back to me."Her divorce with Lockwood has yet to be finalized and the reason she asked for it was because she alleged she found pictures of child porn on Lockwood’ s computer , which most likely is untrue because he was not charged with child porn possession. Lockwood on the other hand , whom Lisa Marie in addition accused of charging thousands of dollars in her credit cards, claimed she made that up because she reacted to a drug intervention he staged with her mother Priscilla as she has a serious illegal substance abuse problem for which she has been to rehab 5 times last decade alone and she testified in court ‘’ she just could not stay sober’’ and ‘’she abused cocaine terribly’’ the last 2–3 years of her marriage with Lockwood , whom she married in Japan in January 2006 , a 340.000 $ wedding , but when she testified in court in 2016 she could not even remember which month or year even their marriage took place. “I had to go to rehab several times. I was a mess. I couldn’t stop,” she stated. Her nostrils sure have a story to tell. Cocaine and Scientology are expensive and funny drugs. Presley said her drug problem included painkiller and opioid abuse, and lasted for the final three years of her marriage. Lockwood also claimed Lisa Marie abused drugs in front of their minor kids and he added that she never takes responsibility for her actions.“As I experienced during our more than 10-year marriage and as I believe this court will learn (Lisa Marie Presley) has great difficulty being honest and she rarely, if ever, accepts personal responsibility for her own wrongdoing, Lisa Marie is a nightmare to live with, she demands getting her own way in every situation and is unwilling to compromise. Her temper tantrums are legendary.”The couple’ s divorce war exploded after Lockwood, 55, plotted to stage an intervention for his junkie wife with the help of her mother, Priscilla Presley, the insider said. When she discovered the plot, the source claimed, Lisa Marie, 49, downed a cocktail of prescription meds. That move, our insiders insisted, triggered Lisa Marie’ s decision to file for divorce last June, and slam Lockwood with accusations that he possessed disturbing images on his laptop, charges have not been proven. Tennessee Authorities concluded it's investigation without charges. Michael Lockwood responded to her accusations: It is particularly distasteful that (she) has placed more value on trying to damage my reputation than on the fact that her false statements may be brought to our daughters’ attention. As I experienced during our more than 10-year marriage and as I believe this court will learn (Presley) has great difficulty being honest and she rarely, if ever, accepts personal responsibility for her own wrongdoing. Now he said he cannot find work because Presley insisted he concentrate on her career throughout their marriage. ;The music industry changed during that time and I lost most or all of my professional connections. Further, I believe (Presley’ s) allegations in her declaration will ruin my reputation and it will be difficult or impossible for me to get a job.Lisa Marie Presley has a set of minor twin girls ( born 2008) with her 4th husband named Michael Lockwood , whose custody she nearly lost due to her addiction to cocaine, pot, opioids and alcohol. Among the drugs she abused was oxycodine — the most abused prescription medication due to its heroin-like effects and addictive quality — labeled with the name “Lisa Presley.” Other bottles are labeled “Lisa Beaulieu,” and yet more are under alleged pseudonyms. Lisa Marie would also apparently binge on Valium and diazepam used as muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety medicine, as well as the painkiller Vicodin, and hydrocodine syrup, which works as a narcotic painkiller when abused.She separated from fourth husband Michael Lockwood on June 13, 2016. The same month, Lisa Marie secretly went to rehab and her mother Priscilla was awarded custody of the couple's twin girls. In messy-divorce news, her mother set the record straight about Lisa Marie’s nasty custody battle and who’s caring for the 8-year-old twins. “The girls have not been in foster care and never will be,” she stated on Facebook. “The girls have been with me and will be until all this is sorted out.” Lisa Marie has been a recovering cocaine addict since she was 14 year old when she dropped out of Junior High. She is a High School dropout. She was a Scientologist for years (since 1977) and she even said that the Church of Scientology helped her deal with her drug problem but she left Scientology a few years ago because they literally milked her dry and that combined with her gold digger husbands , who lived at her expense for years, and her lavish lifestyle led to her financial disaster , for which she blames her previous financial adviser Barry Siegel and has sued him for negligence and breach of trust. He has counter sued her for unpaid salaries and he attributed her financial troubles to her out of control spending habits. Presley filed a lawsuit in which she accused Barry Siegel of dissipating her wealth “through his reckless and negligent mismanagement and self-serving ambition”. Many believed LMP was crying "broke" to make sure her soon-to-be ex doesn't get a dime. But she is indeed broke. This woman was touring bar clubs and IHOP shops like there was no tomorrow. She must have been desperate after selling 85% of EPE. She did the stupidest thing in her life. She should have let her mom continue to run her dad's estate.Elvis tragic junkie daughter Lisa Marie Presley is facing hard time after thumbing her nose at a California judge and refusing to stop popping deadly pain pills. Sources close to the legal war say Lisa Marie may lose custody of her eight years old twin daughters and wind up in the slammer because she hasn't stayed clean like the court required. "It's common for a judge to hold a parent in contempt if they don't follow court orders, especially if those orders are in the best interest of the children. He says the judge is "going to force her to bend to the will of the court" and "could throw her in jail for 30 days if she doesn't get it together". Spoiled Lisa Marie Presley has blown through the fortune she inherited from her father and is now homeless and crashing on relatives couches after losing custody of her twins. In shocking court papers filed as part of the divorce from fourth hubby Michael Lockwood, Lisa Marie admits she has never really worked a day in her life, was milked dry by Scientology, got bad financial advice and squandered the rest of Elvis' legacy on drugs and a luxury jet-set life. Her heyday was crammed with expensive restaurants, designer clothes, $340,000 parties, multi million estates, exotic cars, private jets and near constant travel. Now, Lisa Marie insists she's so broke she can't remember the last time she "spent money on clothes, shoes of any value", is forced to get around on "$3500 Vespa scooter" and hasn't flown or traveled in 18 months. Lisa Marie concedes she's had a lifelong battle of addiction and insiders claim she blew so much money on drugs. But she still earns $4,300 monthly salary from the tourist attraction. She uses the cash to buy health insurance for herself and twin eight years old daughters.Lisa Marie also has a daughter , named Riley ( 31) , who is an actress, and mostly she does legal soft porn movies in which she mostly appears naked and does explicit sex scenes . She plays a call girl on a t.v show . Lisa Marie has stated she is proud of her daughter, who is the star of The Girlfriend Experience . She has a son named Ben (28) by her first husband Danny Keough , also a Scientologist and a musician , whom she married in 1988 , because she was pregnant with her daughter and divorced in 1994, less than 20 days before she ‘’married’’ Michael Jackson in the Dominican Republic in May 1994. The marriage with Michael Jackson was a pr stunt. However , she developed an obsession with him , whom she either badmouthed or praised for years. Lisa knew Michael Jackson had vitiligo, lupus, chronic pain, and third degree burn on his scalp. Yet she came out in public to make fun of his appearance by calling him 'unappealing' and then by acting like he was so strange she was ashamed to have married him or been seen kissing him on stage at the ‘94 VMAs . And then she played the victim like she was in a happy marriage with Danny Keough and MJ tricked her into breaking up her family to marry him and used her to repair his image. She looked bitter, silly, and like an opportunist. She threw Michael Jackson under the bus to become popular in the media and sell her albums. Unfortunately for Lisa , whose romantic feelings for Michael Jackson were unrequited, she had to try to measure up to a lady by the name Diana Ross who is older than her mother, but whose beauty, charisma, and talent still leave her in the dust . Her marriage with Michael Jackson was mercilessly ridiculed in the media. Nobody bought it. The ‘’marriage’’ has gone down in history as one of the most idiotic publicity stunts. Lisa doesn't want the general public to know that she accepted 10% (or maybe 15%) of the profits of Michael Jackson’s History Tour. What a hypocrite she was/is. (Michael Jackson didn't even miss the money, nor did he miss her) . The media mercilessly ridiculed their ‘’ marriage’.But there was a time when Michael was knee deep in live-in sex. With a woman! Or so he would have had us believe when, in 1994, Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley. The couple swore the marriage was legit, but the public had their doubts. For one thing, she was kind of hot at the time and had plenty of loot thanks to being the daughter of Elvis and all. The only thing she was really lacking, as a budding musician herself, was any real reason for the public to give a damn about her. What was in it for Michael? Nothing, other than the possibility of quieting all that "Mike REALLY loves kids" talk. Unfortunately for the young couple, the public wasn't buying it. Looking for a way to change public perception of their sham marriage, the couple appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards and did this. Kind of sends a chill down the spine, doesn't it? That public display of "love" and "affection" was about all the evidence anyone needed to know that, indeed, something wasn't right. And sure enough, the couple divorced a short time after their VMA appearance. Go figure.Lisa Marie Presley has been forced to move in with daughter Riley Keough amid her bitter divorce and custody battle with ex-husband Michael Lockwood and in new court documents, Presley claimed that her $300 million fortune is almost completely gone stating that she cannot even afford to pay her divorce lawyer, Mark Gross. Her mother is said to be fed up with Lisa Marie’s drama queen attitude where she blames everyone around her for her problems except herself. Lisa Marie is a chronic complainer. Lisa Marie was addicted to drugs ( cocaine and cannabis) , alcohol, and painkillers. It is argued that Lisa Marie was spending up to half a million dollars at a California rehabilitation center to quit her nasty habits. Lisa’s been a mess since she was a 15 year old drug addict. An overindulged little girl who was surrounded by enablers because she’s Elvis’s daughter. Also, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her father Elvis had an addictive personality to many things in general like women ,drugs, food. Lisa probably inherited that obsessive part from her dad! There is no doubt that Elvis had an unquenchable appetite for food, drugs, lavishing expensive gifts to friends and - not surprisingly - women and sex, especially sex with virgins. Since her early teen years, Lisa Marie Presley was already into drugs. Priscilla Presley later wrote about her daughter’s infancy.'She would sit between Elvis and me at the dinner table, squeezing spinach through her hands and smearing it on her face. Elvis tried to convince himself that he found all this adorable. By the time Lisa was four, she realized she could manipulate the help. Whenever one of them refused to do something for her, she'd threaten, 'I'm gonna tell my daddy and you're gonna get fired.' Used to seeing people jump at her father's command, Lisa took years to overcome this habit.'Lisa Marie stated about her debt.“I am considering all options to deal with the massive debt that exists, caused by my former business manager” she said, adding that the 15th century manor she owns in Sussex, England, “is no longer an asset.” “It has a negative value as my former business manager failed to make payments and now the taxes owed are in excess of the value of the property. I will be responsible for any deficiencies if the property is seized. “Currently I derive no income as a singer/songwriter and I have never supported myself from my income as a singer/songwriter,” Presley later said in the documents, adding that she has not had “stable housing” since moving back to California. “I lived briefly with my mother, in treatment, and then with friends rent free,” she said. “I currently live in the home of my adult daughter Riley Keough and her husband. I do not pay rent or mortgage in that residence, but I do contribute to the household expenses by paying for Riley’s housekeeper as well as additional household supplies.” “In the last year I have not taken vacations or traveled. “Since we relocated in California in June I have not traveled out of state. I have not flown in any airplane, much less a private plane, in over 18 months.”Lisa Marie paid spousal support to her first husband Danny Keough for years and his brother Tom Keough , who was a witness to her sham marriage with Michael Jackson in May 1994 in the Dominican Republic , was her life long accountant. Tommy’s wife Darlene Love was Lisa’s Scientology minder at the time. Apparently, Danny and Tom swindled millions from her and she issued a public statement in 2009 citing she was very disappointed because she considered them her family. Her mother Priscilla was also apparently sponged off by her 10 years younger than her boyfriend and baby daddy Marco Garibaldi during their 22 years together. She gifted him with a Westwood condo — where he still lives — when they split. Relatives even suspect Priscilla is still paying him support. Apparently, both Lisa Marie and her mother Priscilla have this terrible habit of choosing certain men who want them for their money , aka Elvis Presley’s money. Still Priscilla was smart , because once Elvis died she started on this fairy tale marriage/story, which no doubt made her money. Lisa Marie cannot do that with Michael Jackson. Firstly , because they were never really married and secondly because she non stop dissed him for years. It was nothing but a 18 month marriage/ publicity stunt in which they both were miserable and should never have ‘’married’’.They ( Priscilla and Marco ) must have spent up to $50 million while they were together funding his lavish lifestyle. Her attitude was very much that what was hers was also his — and he took full advantage. Marco claims he’s a screenwriter, but his only credits are for three Power Rangers TV episodes in 1995 and a 2009 Brittany Murphy thriller, Across the Hall.Lisa Marie was also briefly married to actor Nicolas Cage ( August 2002) but he filed for a divorce from her in less than 4 months. The marriage took place in August 2002, it lasted 108 days and Nicolas Cage divorced her in November 2002 but the divorce was finalized in 2004. Cage filed for divorce on Monday, November 25. They held hands and smiled for the cameras at Hollywood's Egyptian Theater on November 23 during an event showcasing Nic's films. He filed for divorce the very next day, November 25.She was previously engaged to John Oszajca since Christmas 1999 but she broke off the engagement in April 2001 . She became romantically involved with actor Nicolas Cage then , whom she married in Hawaii , on 10 August 2002 , only a few days after he proposed to her. Prior to John Oszajca she dated a guy named Luke Watson , also a Scientologist musician , who worked as her bodyguard at the time. He was assigned to her by the Church of Scientology to which they both belonged. But in the past decade she is said to have had a growing dissatisfaction with Scientology, the religion of choice for many of Hollywood’s rich and famous, and in 2016 she officially defected. Her mother and daughter Riley Keough, are both still devout Scientologists, and are reportedly fighting to get her to rejoin the church. Allegedly, when MTV was working on an expose of alternative religions Scientologist Lisa Marie Presley, called the station. She told them bluntly that if they were tough on Scientology, they would lose access to Jackson's music. Her late father Elvis himself was deeply skeptical of Scientology. Marty Lacker wrote in his book Elvis Aaron Presley: Revelations From The Memphis Mafia that after a visit to the Scientology center in Los Angeles, Elvis said: “F**k those people! There’s no way I’ll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin’ group. All they want is my money.”Her mother Priscilla was introduced to Scientology by actor John Travolta. Her daughter Lisa Marie met Travolta when she was 10 and they are still good friends. Allegedly , he was the one who broke the news of Michael Jackson ‘s death to her in 2009. And indeed, Scientology may explain at least some of the Elvis estate’s missing millions. It’s rumored that Priscilla gave the church a hefty share of his estate. Priscilla Presley never remarried but she has a son out of wedlock named Navarone Garibaldi ( born 1987, Priscilla and Lisa Marie were both pregnant almost around the same time ) , who is equally troubled as Lisa. He battles a heroin addiction , he is a pot dealer and he does not get along with his sister Lisa Marie Presley. He wished her death on Facebook and said that his sister has no talent. He also called her’’ a f…..g c…t’’ , he stated his sister is not a nice person and he wished her death after he made hurtful comments about his sister publicly. Navarone Garibaldi is also a musician. nava_rone 2 snakes in the grass . One master of betrayal... one I trust with my life. Navarone on Instagram: “2 snakes in the grass . One master of betrayal... one I trust with my life.” , he wrote about his sister.Priscilla Presley , Lisa Marie’s mother , was shattered when she learned her former boy toy lover Marco Garibaldi— father of her son Navarone — is a fake and con man living a twisted lie. Priscilla Presley got dumped by Marco Garibaldi for a younger woman after they spent 22 years together and they had a son called Navarone. Priscilla bragged on Larry King that Marco Garibaldi was her 'rock of Gibraltar' and that they were going to be together forever. But he dumped her after 22 years and now she is saying that Elvis Presley was her one and only love.Priscilla Presley's Ex-Lover Marco Garibaldi Exposed As Ruthless Con ManFor the 22 years he lived in her Beverly Hills compound before their 2006 split, Marco, now 63, conned Priscilla, 73, into thinking his last name was the noble-sounding Garibaldi and his wealthy Italian family moved to Brazil when he was a tot, say relatives. But the shocking truth is he was born in the Portuguese-speaking nation — and his real name is Garcia. Marco changed his last name and invented a romantic story about Europe and wealth to impress Hollywood bigwigs and Priscilla after they met in 1984. “He comes from a middle class Brazilian family but was told when he moved to the U.S. he’d never make it if he had a Hispanic-sounding last name. He told everyone, including Priscilla, he was from a very important Italian family. It was all a lie. The deception was revealed when Navarone, a musician with the L.A. band Them Guns and the half-brother of Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie , got texts from a teenage Brazilian relative. At first, Navarone didn’t believe this kid, but the messages were persistent,” says a source. “When Navarone confronted his father about it, Marco blew up and told his son to never speak to him again. Marco hasn’t spoken to his son since. Navarone can’t believe he grew up thinking he was Italian and all this time he was Brazilian. It was a real core-shaker for him. As for his mom, Navarone says Priscilla “obviously felt she was deceived and lied to about a lot of things’’.There are unsubstantiated rumors that Lisa Marie is not Elvis Presley’s, her father’s , only child. It is rumored Elvis's guys, named the Memphis Mafia, used to go trolling FOR young girls for Elvis--either they had to be brunette or red heads. Allegedly , he date-raped DOZENS of young/under-aged girls, and when their parents were going to go to the police he either paid them off or he used his power with/on the police, and forced them to tell these families they (the police) couldn't help the families/girls; (Elvis was close with Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover he THOUGHT--actually Hoover and Nixon had files on HIM and they were trailing HIM--and used to laugh at him and call him a fat, hillbilly junkie, behind his back). It was also said Elvis worked for the FBI--for whatever reason. It was rumored that one of the young girls he raped got pregnant at 15. She had a son--and this child looks just LIKE Elvis it's said. This son who is about 55 years old was 'allegedly' born overseas and quickly adopted out to a family in Germany through friends/officials of Elvis's, and it's said Elvis made sure this child would never find out he's Elvis's son. His mother 'allegedly' committed suicide right after she gave birth to him in Germany. Lastly, a friend of Tom Jones once said that Elvis had a thing for black women--Jones told this guy Elvis's Memphis Mafia used to troll for Black women in Vegas/Los Angeles--and really went to GREAT lengths to HIDE this. This black guy said Jones told him that Elvis told him that he 'allegedly' got 2 of these Black conquests pregnant. One wanted to abort, the other didn't. Elvis wouldn't hear of it--he wanted those children--Jones told this man Elvis was against abortion because he told Jones his twin died at birth, and he had issues with about abortions. So, he arranged for both black women to be flown overseas to Germany--and put both of them and the babies (One allegedly a boy and one a girl--both were born around 1972) up in a huge mansion/compound where they all lived together. Elvis also 'allegedly' went to see his 'family' 2 times per year. Also, Priscilla knew about this. The reason Elvis put them in Germany this black guy said was that Jones told him that Elvis had buddies in high places from his military days who made sure NO ONE could get near, see and of course interview these women or find out about his children. These women and children are 'allegedly' taken care of for life and live off a huge chunk of money Elvis put into a German bank and money will be continuously put into this account for the next 50 years 'allegedly' or until the mothers pass away. This black guy said Jones told him that Elvis was feeling guilty he had to hide these kids. Jones he said told Elvis "Man this is almost 1970--new times--and if you feel guilty, just let the truth come out." Elvis told him, "Tom, if you knew the whole truth, you wouldn't even be saying that to me" , Elvis said. None of this is proven however. It is only hearsay. Her father Elvis slept around, indeed , a trait Lisa Marie , who was sexually active at 14 , has no doubt inherited. Before, during and after marriage to Priscilla. Supposedly he also has a son that he fathered by some groupie eons ago, the boy is his dead ringer.Lisa Marie Presley briefly dated actor David Arquete in 1997 after her ‘’divorce’’ from Michael Jackson which was finalized in August 1996. Lisa Marie said years later (2008) that leaving her first husband Danny, whom she met in rehab when she was 18 years old, for Michael Jackson was the biggest mistake of her life. However , after Michael Jackson died in 2009 she said she spent 4 years traveling around the world with Michael Jackson trying to work things out. In 2005, she told Roger Friedman she had not seen or talked to Michael Jackson in a decade. She told Oprah, Pink, Marilyn Manson, JK Rowling, Johnny Ramone, Ashley Judd, the Travoltas, Kirstey Alley, Linda Thompson, Jason Lee and his ex wife Carmen Llywellyn, Juliet Lewis, Diane Sawyer, Larry King, and many others that Michael Jackson was a bad man who cracked her soul and married her to repair his image. Everybody she told on Michael Jackson started calling him a monster and a manipulator. She poisoned the minds of many people about Michael Jackson and gave them the idea that he was a drug addicted pedophile obsessed with her dad Elvis. After Michael Jackson died in 2009 she said about him.He was an incredible, an incredibly dynamic person. If you were in his vicinity and he wanted to give – and he showed you who he was, and he was willing to do that in any way, meant that… I have never felt so high in my life. I have never felt so high in my life as that. I am not lying when I say that. He had something so intoxicating about him and when he was on, when he was ready to share with you or give it to you, and be himself and allow you to come in. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that intoxicated by anything… It was like a drug. He was like a drug for me. I felt like I just always wanted to be around him, always wanted to be part of – I felt so high. I’ve never felt like that around another human being , He was an amazing person and I am lucky to have gotten as close to him as I did and to have had the many experiences and years that we had together.Lisa also left a vase of sunflowers for Michael Jackson with the inscription “I Will Always Love You’’. She is totally bipolar. She has major Border Personality Disorder, and is a Histrionic. She takes after her daddy. And she is a manipulative opportunist. That was a calculating act on her part. After all she had an album to promote. Five years before she went on Oprah with her mother and she mocked Michael Jackson because again she had an album to promote. After Elvis’ death, she’d vowed to make her daddy proud of her as a performer. But her musical efforts have fallen short.In 2010 She went on Oprah ( more precisely Oprah went to London to interview Lisa Marie ) , who ( Oprah ) always lavishes Scientologists with praise and attention, professing her love for Michael Jackson and her blog when she said that she was gutted and how fortunate she was to have got to know him. Both Lisa and Oprah thought that 2010 interview with Lisa on Michael Jackson would help them . Isn’t it strange that OWN was failing at the time and Lisa's album that she was speaking about in 2010 also flopped? Lisa has learned from her mother so much about trying to play the "grieving widow". After Lisa ‘s father died in 1977 her mother said she was so scared that she didn ’t know what to do or where to go after Elvis died even though she had already been separated from Elvis for years , in fact she left him for another man.Lisa Marie doesn't seem to be friendly with Pink and Marilyn Manson anymore and she very quickly said she dumped all of her friends and employees and moved to England for a fresh start. That probably means they all realized what a liar she is and she wanted to get away from Hollywood because everyone knows she's a liar. Lisa knew that being Mrs. Michael Jackson would not only get her status but in a sick twisted way reform the image of her own father. The problem is she became infatuated with Michael Jackson and her feelings got in the way. Michael Jackson did not then or ever need Lisa Marie on any level. His disdain for her only inflated her superficial ego and brought her down to the rightful place it belonged, as a used-up, talentless coke addict. She was still seeing her ex husband Danny while still ‘’married’’ to Michael Jackson. She went on vacation to Hawaii with her ex-husband and their kids . She did the same with actor Nicolas Cage. She spent Thanksgivings day with Danny and his family at her place while Nicolas Cage stayed at his house alone.Lisa Marie told the National Esquirer she had at least one lesbian affair at boarding school and she occasionally hung out at lesbian bars. Most likely she lied about being a lesbian for controversy because clearly she likes men too much to be a lesbian or even bisexual and that is part of her downfall. She was clearly exploited by both Danny Keough and Michael Lockwood. By her own admission , she was obsessed with sex since she was a toddler and she used her doll’s legs to masturbate. I suspect that when she was 13 her mother's boyfriend sexually molested her. His name is Michael Edwards. He used to enter her bedroom naked and drunk and he would stare at her while she slept or was taking a shower. She said he was a sick individual who fantasized about making love to her developing body. One of her mother's boy toys molested Lisa Marie after first grooming her. Priscilla blamed her daughter rather than immediately kicking her boyfriend out of her home, and then seeking counseling for Lisa Marie. Clearly Lisa Marie was sexualized at a very young age and witnessed a lot of things she shouldn't. Wonder if she was ever taught that women are more than sex objects to seemingly selfish men who don't care about their well being. After Priscilla kicked Edwards out of her house that's when Lisa Marie started having sex with lots of men and doing drugs and drinking in bars and rebel against her mother. Teenage girls who have been sexually molested by an adult they become sexually promiscuous at a very early age and they drink and do drugs to try to numb their pain. I believe that was the case of Lisa Marie Presley. Even though she brags about being born a pervert and having been fascinated by sex since she was a toddler, I believe she has been a victim of child sex abuse. Maybe that's why Priscilla enrolled her in Scientology at such an early age to try to repair her psyche after what happened. This is what Mike Edwards , her mom’s boyfriend wrote about Lisa Marie in his book. He was clearly into adolescent Lisa Marie. Sick and disgusting !"Where Priscilla and I had once been inseparable, it was now Lisa and I who were together almost every day. Soon I found I was looking at my watch, waiting for Lisa's school to let out, just as Elvis had once eagerly awaited Priscilla's return to Graceland from school each day. By the end of the summer, Lisa's embraces seemed longer and closer every time we played together. I would ask myself, am I beginning to hug her too close? I enjoyed her affections, but, like every father who has ever seen a beautiful daughter through puberty, I found it difficult to keep a grip on my emotions. The fact that Lisa was not my blood kin didn't make it any easier. "You're so pretty, Lisa," I said, my heart melting. "Shut up, Merky. Don't be silly. I'm not pretty." "You are, too, Lisa." "No, I'm not. I'm funny-looking. I heard the electrical click of the big iron gate as it opened in front. Through the shrubbery, I saw Priscilla white Mercedes pulling into the drive. "We'd better stop now," I told Lisa. "Let's go meet your mother." Priscilla met us as we came back into the house. "What's going on?" she asked. "I was taking some pictures of Lisa," I explained. "Did you put that makeup on her?" "Just a little bit—to blend her complexion." "I see. Lisa, you'd better go to your room and do your homework." As soon as Lisa left us, Priscilla's jaw tightened and her eyes turned that ice-blue color that told me she was livid. Did you have fun with my daughter, Michael?" "She's lonesome, Priscilla. She doesn't have any friends to play with besides me. She's thirteen years old and she should be over at girlfriend "Aren't you a little old for her?" She does not want to hang around here by herself in this big, empty house." I looked up at Lisa, who was now thirteen, and she had never looked more appealing to me. For a moment, I wanted to take her into my arms and love her right there in the bed that her mother and I shared. As if reading my mind, Lisa rose, leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, and said, grinning, "Go to bed now, Merkly. Don't be so upset with my mother. A sick feeling crept slowly into the pit of my stomach. I was craving Lisa sexually. I tickled her and pushed her away and told her to go take a shower and we'd get dinner ready for her mother. I watched her glistening wet body as she ran up the steps, past the garden, and disappeared inside the house. She asked me to explain what there was between Lisa and me. I wanted to tell her I was in love with Lisa, but how do you tell the woman you're in love with that you're also in love with her daughter? I realized this was one thing I couldn't discuss with Priscilla. My love for Lisa always bordered on intimacy. As Lisa grew to a young woman it was a constant battle for me to keep my feelings in the proper perspective. When Lisa threw her arms around me in a daughterly way and said, using one of her many pet names for me, "Merky, I love you. You're so cute," I melted. She unknowingly exuded the same power of sexual charisma that her father had wielded over millions.One of the traumas of her childhood is the fact that Elvis the superstar dedicated very little time with raising her. He was either touring across the U.S. or entertaining the Memphis mafia at Graceland or flirting with women at the set of his Hollywood movies. So when it was time for him to raise his daughter hands-on he was too tired to do it so he slept all day while Lisa as a child she felt neglected. Here is an interesting quote from Larry Geller's book about Elvis Presley:Lisa often waited for long periods of time for Elvis to get up and get himself together. Often he awoke too groggy to deal with her or anyone. Her time with him was so precious that she naturally wanted to be with him constantly... As I entered Elvis's room I turned to see Lisa peering inside the door, a look of longing and sadness on her face. As I told Elvis of my encounter with Lisa on the way in, he lowered his head. Anguished, he said, "Whenever I wake up, she's outside my door. Sittin', playin', waitin'- waitin' for me. I tried to explain to her that I don't get up early like everybody else. She's my whole life- what the hell am I doing to my baby?"At the age of 18 Lisa Marie was a total train wreck , high as a kite, and she herself resorted to Scientology, which is said that facilitated her ‘’marriage’’ with Michael Jackson so that Scientology could get its hands on his fame and money, to get help for her drug addition. I really don ’t think she is a lesbian but she said she was for self promotion because she wanted to kick off a career in music. She claimed she had repressed ‘’lesbianism’’. Lisa Marie has stated she gets urges for other women but tries to keep them at bay. She thought if it worked for Madonna, Alanis Morissette and even Geri Halliwell from the Spice Girls , it might work for her career too. But it didn’t. She in fact ‘’married’’ Michael Jackson to get a recording contract with MJJ Records in November 1992. Michael married this woman after he settled the 1993 "child abuse allegation case"and everyone felt that it was a publicity stunt on his part to get the public to focus on his marriage to Lisa Marie and not the smear campaign he had to endure.Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley met in November 1992 at Brett Livingstone-Stone's place in Los Angeles. Lisa had just had her second child with the musician Danny Keough whom she married when she turned 20, on October 1988. At the beginning of the nineties, Lisa had the ambition to become a singer and was looking for someone who could help her to record her first album. Brett Livingstone, an artist who was a friend of both Lisa and Michael, thought that it could be a great idea to introduce them. Michael was the man who could help Lisa in her career : “She had the talent as well as the beauty and the name, so I thought Wow! The sky is the limit. What an image! I had known Michael for six years or more, and I thought maybe I could introduce Lisa to Michael Jackson. I thought, Hey, the person to get is Michael Jackson, because he’s an artist, instead of dealing with businessmen who would just categorize her and work her way up.” However when Brett called Michael in order to arrange a meeting between them, Michael did not want to hear anything about it and told Brett that Lisa Marie Presley was totally unable to sing. Cleverly enough, Brett managed to change Michael's mind and the latter agreed to have one of Lisa's tape sent to him. When she heard about it, Lisa was not so enthusiastic about sending a demo to Michael and preferred to play the tape in person for the king of pop. Excited at the idea of meeting Michael Jackson, Lisa badgered Brett into organizing a meeting as soon as possible. Brett finally managed to gather them at his place in Pacific Palisades on November 1992. Lisa came with her husband Danny and played the demo for Michael in the living room. Her music literally blew him away and he thought that she had a potential to be a great singer. Lisa, according to Brett, was the one who was in pursuit. “I think it was the passion of a woman who fell in love. And Michael wasn’t even interested at all. And he is a gentleman, he wouldn’t have wanted to pull her away from her marriage to Danny. And she pursued him. Family friend Bob Wall, who heard about it after the fact, confirmed this. “I know that Lisa is the one who pursued the relationship.” She did it, Bob felt, to create an identity separate from the Presley name, to be known as something other than “the daughter of.” “Lisa really wants to be credible,” said Bob. “You’ve got her father, who’s a genius. Her mother’s done incredibly well. And all she’s got is a lot of money. So maybe that’s important to her, to create her own identity.” Lisa celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday with a huge party, planned by Priscilla, at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Prince was among the guests, along with a sprinkling of celebrity Scientologists such as Kirstie Alley, Nicole Kidman, and Juliette Lewis. Lisa invited Michael Jackson as her special guest, “and he would have loved to have gone,” said Brett, “but he had other things.” Brett suggested to Michael that he should at least send Lisa a birthday gift, “so he told me, ‘Well you go get it!’ ” Brett selected, as Michael’s gift to Lisa, an art book on Michelangelo and a silver picture frame in which he placed a photograph of Michael and Lisa’s original meeting in his living room. Brett, attempting to be gallant on Michael’s behalf, wrote sweet birthday inscriptions in the art book and on the birthday card, making them appear to be from Michael. “I was just trying to be a good friend for him,” said Brett. “I went to the party with my son Jason, and when I got there, Lisa was like, ‘Oh! Where’s Michael? I hope it’s all right that Prince is here.’ I said, ‘Michael just couldn’t make it, but here is a gift from him.’ And I didn’t say anything [else].” Lisa, he recalled, “latched onto the gifts excitedly and immediately opened them to check them out.” He later figured out, said Brett, that he had inadvertently played matchmaker to Michael and Lisa by buying the birthday gifts, for Lisa, seeing the card and the inscription in the art book, both of which she believed to have been written by Michael, misinterpreted Brett’s affectionate words as an indication that Michael Jackson had feelings for her. “I wasn’t trying to bring two people together to get married. I look back on it now as a sign that [she was thinking], Wow! He really cares about me. And she secretly wanted a relationship with him, because I always talked about him as a passionate man [who was] extremely loving…and that attracted Lisa, that loving part, and loving children.” Lisa’s ill-founded marriage to Michael came tumbling down within six months of the Diane Sawyer interview, when Lisa filed for divorce in January 1996. The inside word was that, before the marriage, Michael had promised Lisa a recording contract with his company and had later reneged. “That’s what he might have been promising her,” commented Myrna, who disapproved of the marriage from the outset, “but that might not have been his intention.” Lisa, she revealed, was devastated by the experience. “He’s very much top of the pile in his world, and that’s probably one reason why Lisa filed for divorce,” said Brett. “And the things she asked for from Michael, he wasn’t willing to do.”According to Flo Anthony Michael Jackson ‘s marriage to his nurse Debbie Rowe in 1997 was a slap in Presley’s face."For the past month Lisa Marie has been trying to go back to Michael. They've been on the phone constantly and all of this is a slap in her face. Lisa Marie still feels burning love for Jackson and the break up was not what it seems. They said it was amicable but it was more Michael saying later than Lisa Marie . Lisa Marie just turned out not to be the person Michael thought she was. She turned out to be very manipulative and wanting to take over his whole life."Karen Faye , Michael Jackson ‘s make up artist , said about Lisa Marie Presley“Lisa Marie is a very evil little girl. She was horrible to Michael, myself, and anyone who was around Michael. She was even jealous of her own children when they adored Michael. She was the one trying to manipulate Michael and his world. I never saw Michael so miserable as I did when he was married to Lisa. Lisa only used Michael’s name after the divorce to get publicity for herself. Her behavior while married to Michael was inexplicable at best. Nothing seemed to work for her because she was very “confused” and, from what she’s saying, very troubled. She was a lovely person before they married. she pursued him with a vengeance even when she was still married. She did not smoke or drink, as soon as they got married, she drank, smoked, wanted to fire everyone around Michael, and demanded he become a Scientologist. he bent over backwards to please her, he never could, she was just too miserable,”Apparently , Michael Jackson was not the only one who didn ’t want to give Lisa Marie a record deal. The songs on To Whom it may it concern were played for RCA executives a long time ag0, and they were rejected outright. "They weren't very good," said one listener, "and there wasn't much we could do for them. We told her that it wouldn't be right to release just because she was Elvis’ daughter. And she understood that. Presley at one time had let Alannis Morissette’s producer, Glen Ballard, do the production work on the album. "But even that didn't help," says the RCA insider. "I don't know what they've done to the stuff to make it work now. We heard the song about her father. That is not a new song. It's been around for a while. And look, she can't really sing."Lisa Marie Presley’s music career is over, mostly because she cannot sing , and I doubt if she does another tour since no one went to the last one. She definitely lives in her own little world. She thinks she can sing. Even America Idol reject William Hung sold more albums than her. Her songs makes your soul attempt suicide, that's how bad of a singer she is, sadly every producer she uses have used voice overs recordings just to give her voice some life but she cracks on all her notes; she will never ever in her lifetime be a recording rock artist like Pink whom she is a stan. Pink don't even care two cents about Presley , who loves to hate on others who can sing better than her. Pink recorded the song 'Shine' with Lisa on the album "Now what" and it's awful. Pink had to whisper her lyrics because she didn't want her powerful voice to outshine Lisa's weak voice. She had THE BEST of THE BEST working on her last album and it still failed epically. She spent a lot of money on Storm and Grace. Lisa Marie knew this album with producer T Bone Burnett was really her last chance for a showbiz hit, it had been six-seven years since her last record, and this one was a do-or-die project. Lisa Marie had been working on her “do-or-die” third album for several years and had enlisted Grammy-winning producer T-Bone Burnett to guide her through the recording process but T Bone Burnett wrote about her album.Heard Lisa's new album. The music is beautiful. The Lyrics aren't bad. The voice has not improved. If anything it sounds worse. This album would have been a hit had it been Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson or Zoey Deschanel singing it. Lisa cannot sing and she needs to hang it up once and for all. Her new album has tanked. Big flop. The Presley name did not save her. I bet the new record company will drop her. What a waste of good music on such a mediocre singer.Lisa doesn't know how to tell the truth. She survives by believing her own lies. Completely deluded. She is clearly out of touch with reality. She thinks she is better than everybody else on this planet and that she is entitled to get everything she wants just because she is the daughter of Elvis Presley. Priscilla Presley raised her to become a sociopath while Scientology groomed her to become a bully. At the beginning of her 2010 Oprah interview, Oprah says that Lisa Marie Presley had not spoken to Michael Jackson for ten years prior to his death, but then in the same interview, LMP said "he" called her in 2005, was "coherent" and cried. She definitely lied about 2005. There is no way he called her and there is no way Michael Jackson asked her if she still loved him. She is definitely a liar. Similarly, on the one hand she says she is proud of her daughter stripping and playing those controversial roles but then in another article she is against it . She is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Or just shows whatever way the wind is blowing (the majority of peoples reactions to whatever is trending with people close to her) is the way she feels regardless of what she said previously.Lisa Marie always wanted a singing career and she released her first album in 2003 under the title To Whom it May concern. The album was not a big hit but it was by far more successful than her later two albums , which were big flops. She admitted that she never produced any revenue or generated any income from her career as a singer/ songwriter. Objectively , she has no talent. Lisa Marie Presley is talentless. She can't fit into any genre because she can’t sing ; NOBODY wants her. Her record companies dropped her even though she made it seem like she left them because she has a huge ego. She claimed Capitol Records did not did do enough for her album. Certainly , that was the problem.Famous for her lineage. Same with the daughter, handed a modeling contract and given acting roles for the same reason. She has already fallen into oblivion . She is only notorious for her failed marriages, her drug addiction and recently her financial problems. The blog she wrote in 09 failed. Her sunflower idea failed . Her exhibit with the clothes/pics at Graceland failed. Her albums failed. Her letter failed. Her appearances failed. Her interviews trying to blame others for losing money failed. Her 4 marriages failed . She has zero relevancy. And that ‘s why she has a resting bitch face.

Well, I was born on September 26, 1965 the beginning of Vietnam war.What was going on in 1965 in the United States?March 8 – Vietnam War: Some 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam, becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam. ... In response to the events of March 7 and 9 in Selma, Alabama, President Johnson sends a bill to Congress that forms the basis for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.1970U.S. President Richard Nixon orders an invasion of Cambodia, widening the war in Vietnam. ...The U.S. Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that had given Presidents Johnson and Nixon sweeping powers in the Vietnam War.The Beatles break up.Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nassar dies.The War in Vietnam comes to an end at the end of April in 1975 as a series of events leads to the fall of Saigon. ... After realizing that it would be impossible to defend the South against North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese president resigned and South Vietnam surrendered unconditionally to the North.1980’sThe history of the United States from 1980 until 1991 includes the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency, eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration, and the first three years of the George H. W. Bush presidency, up to the collapse of the Soviet Union.1985’sIn world events and culture, 1985 can be characterized as heralding in the new. Windows 1.0 is released, the FDA develops a test for screening blood for AIDS, the first successful artificial heart transplant occurs, Gorbachev becomes the de facto leader of the Soviet Union, and the NES game system hits the US. Heck, even Coke was new in 1985. On the music front, this was the year of both “We Are the World” and “Live Aid.” Big singles of the year included “Rock Me Amadeus,” “Take on Me,” and “Like a Virgin.” The Golden Girls hit the small screen, while “Back to the Future,” “The Goonies,” and “Breakfast Club” hit the big screen. The world lost Rock Hudson but gained the likes of Michael Phelps and Keira Knightley.1990s1990 — Hubble Space Telescope launched during Space Shuttle Discovery mission. ...1991 — The Gulf War is waged in the Middle East, by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from thirty-four nations, led by the U.S. and United Kingdom, against Iraq.1991 — The World Wide Web is publicly debuted as an Internet service.In Bush v. Gore (2000), a divided Supreme Court ruled that the state of Florida's court-ordered manual recount of vote ballots in the 2000 presidential election was unconstitutional. The case proved to be the climax of the contentious presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush.What historical event happened in 2006?Introduction. 2006. The headlines in 2006 were marked by death, scandal and politics: 12 die in Sago Mine disaster. ...Sago Mine disaster. January 5. ...Immigration protests. April 10. ...McCartney-Mills separate. May 17. ...Enron trial. May 25. ...Al-Zarqawi killed. June 7. ...World Cup final. July 9. ...Mumbai train blasts. July 11.What significant events happened in 2010?Event of InterestJan 12 Earthquake occurs in Haiti killing approximately 160,000 and destroying the majority of the capital Port-au-Prince.Jan 12 Colombia officially leaves the recession after achieving 2% economic growth in the last quarter of 2009.Jan 14 Yemen declares war on al-Qaeda.What all happened in 2016?10 Events That Changed Us All in 2016The U.S. Presidential Election. ...The Brexit Referendum. ...The Zika Virus. ...President Obama's official trip to Cuba. ...The continued threat of ISIS. ...The Orlando nightclub shooting. ...The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ...Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests.2018 the presentThe strong civil society and democratic institutions of the United States were tested in the first year of the administration of President Donald Trump. Across a range of issues in 2017, the US moved backward on human rights at home and abroad.Trump has targeted refugees and immigrants, calling them criminals and security threats; emboldened racist politics by equivocating on white nationalism; and consistently championed anti-Muslim ideas and policies. His administration has embraced policies that will roll back access to reproductive health care for women; championed health insurance changes that would leave many more Americans without access to affordable health care; and undermined police accountability for abuse. Trump has also expressed disdain for independent media and for federal courts that have blocked some of his actions. And he has repeatedly coddled autocratic leaders and showed little interest or leadership in pressing for the respect of human rights abroad.The individuals most likely to suffer abuse in the United States—including members of racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, children, the poor, and prisoners—are often least able to defend their rights in court or via the political process. Many vulnerable groups endured renewed attacks on their rights during the year. Other longstanding US laws and practices—particularly related to criminal and juvenile justice, immigration, and national security—continued to violate internationally recognized human rights.December 5, 2017VideoVIDEO: The DeportedA surge in immigration arrests of people living in the United States under the Trump administration is having a devastating impact on long-term immigrants with strong ties to the US.Harsh Criminal SentencingOn any given day in the US, there are 2.3 million people in state and federal prisons and jails, the world’s largest reported incarcerated population. Concerns about over-incarceration in prisons—partly due to mandatory minimum sentencing and excessively long sentences—have led some states and the US Congress to propose reforms. At time of writing, a bipartisan proposal for sentencing and corrections reform was gaining momentum in Congress, but the Trump administration had given no indication of support.Thirty-one US states impose the death penalty. At time of writing, 23 people in eight states had been executed in 2017, all by lethal injection. Debate over lethal injection protocols continued, with several US states continuing to use experimental drug combinations and refusing to disclose their composition.Racial Disparities, Drug Policy, and PolicingRacial disparities permeate every part of the US criminal justice system, including in the enforcement of drug laws. Black people make up 13 percent of the population and 13 percent of all adults who use drugs, but 27 percent of all drug arrests. Black men are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white men.Police continue to kill black people in numbers disproportionate to their overall share of the population. Black people are 2.5 times as likely as white to be killed by police. An unarmed black person is five times as likely to be killed by police as an unarmed white person.The Trump administration has expressed almost unconditional support for the prerogatives of law enforcement officers, scaling back or altogether removing police oversight mechanisms. The US Department of Justice began to discontinue investigations into, and monitoring of, local police departments reported to have patterns and practices of excessive force and constitutional violations.The administration reversed an order from the Obama administration limiting acquisition of offensive military weaponry by local police departments. In a speech in July, President Trump encouraged officers to use unnecessary force on suspects. Congress introduced the “Back the Blue Act,” which would severely restrict civilians’ rights to sue police officers who unlawfully injure them.Despite voicing concern over the opioid crisis, the Trump administration signaled an intent to re-escalate the “war on drugs” and de-emphasize bipartisan public health approaches to drug policy. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded his predecessor’s Smart on Crime initiative, which had prioritized federal prosecutions of individuals accused of high-level drug offenses, reduced racial disparities in federal drug sentencing, and improved re-entry opportunities.Youth in the Criminal Justice SystemNearly 50,000 youth age 17 and younger are held in juvenile prisons or other confinement facilities on any given day in the US, and approximately 5,000 more are incarcerated in adult jails or prisons. Every year, 200,000 people under 18 have contact with the adult criminal system, with many children tried automatically as adults.The US continues to sentence children to life in prison without parole, although states increasingly reject its use: as of 2017, 25 states and Washington, DC had banned or did not use the sentence for children.Poverty and Criminal JusticePoor defendants throughout the United States are locked up in pretrial detention because they cannot afford to post bail. A 2017 Human Rights Watch report demonstrated that pretrial detention—often resulting from failure to pay bail—coerces people, some innocent, into pleading guilty just to get out of jail. A movement to reduce the use of money bail is growing in the US, with several states implementing, and others considering, reform.April 11, 2017VideoVideo: California Bail System Penalizes the PoorCalifornia pressures poor people who cannot pay bail to plead guilty in order to be released from jail. The system of money bail and pretrial detention also results in the unnecessary jailing of innocent people and undermines justice for all.Many states and counties fund their court systems, including judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, partly or entirely via fees and fines imposed on criminal and traffic defendants. The privatization of misdemeanor probation services by several US states has led to abuses, including fees structured by private probation companies to penalize poor offenders.Rights of Non-CitizensOne week after his January 20, 2017 inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order to suspend the US refugee program, cut the number of refugees who could be resettled into the US in 2017, and temporarily ban entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. This and later versions of the order banning entry from various countries have been the subject of ongoing federal litigation.In October, Trump signed an executive order resuming the refugee program but with new screening measures. The annual cap for refugee admissions for 2018 was set at 45,000, the lowest annual limit since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980.On the back of rhetoric falsely conflating illegal immigration with increased crime, Trump also moved to make all deportable immigrants “priority” targets for deportation, penalize so-called sanctuary cities and states that have limited local police involvement in federal immigration enforcement; expand abusive fast-track deportation procedures and criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses; and increase the prolonged detention of immigrants, despite evidence, documented by Human Rights Watch and others, of abusive conditions in immigration detention.In August, President Trump repealed a program protecting from deportation immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, putting hundreds of thousands of people who grew up in the US at risk of deportation. President Trump signaled he would support legislation that provided legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. However, in October the White House released a hardline set of immigration principles and policies—including weakening protections for child migrants and refugees—it considers necessary components of any such legislative deal.Some cities and states sought to increase protections for immigrants by creating funds for legal services, limiting local law enforcement involvement in federal immigration enforcement, and resisting efforts to defund “sanctuary” cities. Others sought to pass laws punishing such localities.In December, Human Rights Watch reported on the impact of the Trump administration on immigration policies, profiling dozens of long-term residents with strong family and other ties within the US who were summarily deported. US law rarely allows for individualized hearings that weigh such ties, and most immigrants do not have attorneys to help them fight deportation.At time of writing, seizures for deportation of undocumented people from the interior without criminal convictions had nearly tripled to 31,888 between the inauguration and the end of September 2017, compared with 11,500 during approximately the same period in 2016.Right to HealthTo date, attempts in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—legislation that has greatly expanded access to health care for millions of Americans—have failed. However, the Medicaid program, private insurance subsidies, non-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and other key elements of the ACA remained vulnerable to regulatory action by the Trump administration.The Trump administration’s opioid commission released an interim report endorsing numerous public health approaches, but did not recommend protecting Medicaid, which currently covers drug dependence treatment. The commission endorsed increased access to naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, but did not recommend that it be available over the counter, a potential game-changer in addressing the more than 90 deaths per day from opioid overdose in the US.April 27, 2017VideoVIDEO: "Miracle Drug" Naloxone Saves LivesThe US federal and state governments are taking insufficient action to ensure access to the life-saving medication naloxone to reverse opioid overdose, resulting in thousands of preventable deaths.Around 1.5 million Americans live in nursing homes, where inappropriate and nonconsensual use of antipsychotic medications—for staff convenience or to discipline residents without a medical purpose—is widespread. To date, government agencies have not taken sufficient steps to end this practice.Rights of People with DisabilitiesThe Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the ACA, which provides crucial services to people with disabilities, and a proposed rollback of accessibility obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, could undermine the rights of people with disabilities. In July 2017, a man with a psychosocial disability, William Charles Morva, was executed in Virginia, 2017, despite pleas from lawmakers and UN experts to commute his sentence.A 2017 Ruderman Foundation study found that one-third to one-half of all use of force by police in the US involve people with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities.Women’s and Girls’ RightsPresident Trump, his cabinet appointees, and the Republican-controlled Congress rolled back some important women’s rights protections, domestically and in foreign policy, and pledged to dismantle others. Some state governments also eroded women’s rights by introducing new laws with absurd restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. Several high-profile media revelations related to sexual harassment and misconduct reinvigorated discussions around abuses suffered by women at work and in public places.Congress passed legislation dismantling a rule protecting family planning funds in Title X, a national program that funds services to more than 4 million Americans, ensuring access to reproductive health care. The new legislation makes it easier for states to restrict Title X grants by creating eligibility requirements that could exclude certain family planning providers, like Planned Parenthood. This will leave many women without affordable access to cancer screenings, birth control, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.Congressional proposals to repeal the ACA would have dealt a major blow to essential women’s health services, including by preventing the nongovernmental organization Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding, and allowing states to limit insurance coverage for an array of essential women’s health benefits. Trump’s proposed federal budget also called for massive Medicaid cuts.Trump also issued an executive order on “promoting free speech and religious liberty,” which will cut women off from access to reproductive health services. It invites agencies to issue regulations that would allow more employers and insurers to assert “conscience-based objections” to the preventive-care mandate of the ACA, which includes contraception. Religious employers are already exempt, and religious non-profits and certain closely held corporations also have accommodations. Following Trump’s order, the Department of Health and Human Services effectively reversed the contraceptive coverage mandate by expanding exemptions to cover nearly any objecting employer.The White House announced in August that it would scrap an equal pay initiative that was to go into effect in 2018. As a result, large employers and federal contractors will not be required to provide disaggregated information about employees’ compensation to civil rights enforcement agencies. It also revoked executive orders that required federal contractors to comply with fair pay measures and a ban on forced arbitration of sexual harassment and discrimination claims. The Department of Education announced its intention to review and change guidelines on campus sexual assault, notably the Obama-era guidance on Title IX of Education Amendments Act of 1972.Several states adopted highly restrictive laws on abortion and reproductive health. These include new bans on abortion in some circumstances or other restrictive measures in Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Iowa, Tennessee. Some states increased efforts to deny public family planning funds to providers who also offer abortion services.Despite these significant assaults on women’s human rights, the picture was not entirely grim. Congress passed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes new protections for whistleblowers in military sexual assault cases and requires training on preventing sexual assault. Trump signed into law the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, which aims to increase women’s participation in conflict prevention and security.New York State’s 2017 law reform on child marriage dramatically reduces the circumstances under which children can marry.Millions gathered for Women’s Marches in Washington, DC, and in cities around the world to demand equality and justice.Sexual Orientation and Gender IdentityIn the first five months of 2017, legislators in several states introduced more than 100 bills that would attack or undermine LGBT rights. In March 2017, North Carolina partially repealed a 2016 law requiring transgender people to use government facilities according to their sex assigned at birth and barring local governments from prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people. The 2017 provisions bar local governments from passing transgender-inclusive policies and prohibit local non-discrimination ordinances from protecting LGBT people until 2020.In April, Mississippi enacted a law protecting individuals who discriminate based on their religious convictions regarding same-sex marriage, extramarital sex, and transgender people.Tennessee enacted a law permitting therapists and counselors to decline to serve LGBT people based on their religious beliefs.At time of writing, 20 states have laws banning workplace and housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while two states prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation but not gender identity.National SecurityPresident Trump made statements during the presidential campaign and once in office supporting the use of torture of detainees and other counterterrorism policies that would amount to violations of US and international law. Trump later backtracked on these proposals saying he would defer to Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was outspoken against torture, on interrogation matters.In November, the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested judicial authorization to open an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the armed conflict in Afghanistan, including by US personnel in secret detention sites in Afghanistan and elsewhere.At time of writing, media reported that US forces interrogated detainees in secret prisons run by foreign forces in Yemen. Defense Department officials denied that abuses had occurred when US forces were present, although their statements did not preclude possible US complicity in torture. Following the reports, the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter to Mattis demanding an investigation into the matter. Mattis’ response remained classified at time of writing.Trump promised to keep the US prison at Guantanamo Bay open and send new detainees there. The US continues to hold 31 men at the facility indefinitely without charge, nearly all of whom have been there for more than a decade. The Obama administration failed to release five that it had cleared for release. It claimed the remaining 26 could neither be prosecuted nor released but did not adequately explain the basis for these determinations or allow detainees to meaningfully challenge them.The US continues to prosecute seven men for terrorist offenses, including the 9/11 attacks on the US, in Guantanamo’s fundamentally flawed military commissions system, which does not meet international fair trial standards. It also is holding three men who have already been convicted by the commissions.SurveillanceThroughout 2017, the US continued to carry out large-scale warrantless intelligence surveillance programs without transparency or oversight. Authorities used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to target non-citizens (except lawful permanent residents) outside the country for warrantless communications monitoring and to “incidentally” gather large numbers of communications to or from people in the US.Section 702 was scheduled to end at the end of 2017 unless Congress renewed it; at time of writing federal appeals courts had differing conclusions about the constitutionality of certain aspects of the law.US surveillance of global communications under Executive Order 12333 remained shrouded in secrecy, with neither Congress nor the courts providing meaningful oversight. In January, the government disclosed procedures for the National Security Agency (NSA) to share data with domestic law enforcement agencies obtained by surveillance under the order. Documents disclosed to Human Rights Watch during the year revealed a Defense Department policy under the order sanctioning otherwise prohibited forms of monitoring of people inside the United States designated as “homegrown violent extremists.” The Defense Department has not revealed how it designates “extremists” or what types of monitoring may result.In May 2017, the Trump administration approved a proposal that asks US visa applicants for social media handles and accounts from the past five years as part of its enhanced vetting process. The US also continues to assert broad authority to search electronic devices and copy data at the border without any suspicion of wrongdoing.Freedom of Expression and AssemblyIn one of his last acts in office, President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, a soldier who had received a 35-year prison term for disclosing US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks and endured abuse while in custody. However, the US government continued to seek the extradition from Russia of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed the scope of US mass surveillance in 2013.In June 2017, the Justice Department indicted NSA contractor Reality Winner for allegedly disclosing classified information about possible Russian government interference in the 2016 US election. Under current US law and contrary to international human rights law, Winner will not have a chance to claim that she made her disclosures in the public interest.President Trump repeatedly criticized journalists and posted comments and videos denigrating them during the year, prompting concerns over the chilling of freedom of speech. In August 2017, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern that “freedom of the press” in the United States was “under attack from the President.”Two UN experts expressed alarm about state legislative proposals seeking to “criminalize peaceful protests,” and a third described “a militarized, at times violent, escalation of force…” against protesters opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline. In August, a woman protesting at a rally held by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, was killed when a man allegedly drove a car into the crowd; the driver was charged with murder.In July 2017, the US Justice Department served a warrant on a company that hosted a website used to coordinate protests at the inauguration, demanding information that included more than 1.3 million Internet Protocol addresses that could identify site visitors.Foreign PolicyDuring his inaugural address, Trump articulated a vision of foreign policy that placed “America First,” vowing to defeat terrorism, strengthen the US military, and embrace diplomacy based on US interests. Some foreign dignitaries invited to the White House early in his presidency included those with poor reputations on human rights, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan.On his first full day in office, President Trump reinstated and dramatically expanded the Mexico City Policy, or “Global Gag Rule.” This strips US health funding from foreign nongovernmental organizations if they use funds from any source to supply information about abortions, provide abortions, or advocate to liberalize abortion laws. The expanded Global Gag Rule will have disastrous effects beyond previous gag rules—restricting some $8.8 billion in foreign assistance for health services such as family planning, maternal healthcare, and services to treat HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis in 60 countries.Affected organizations cannot easily replace these funds, which help prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and tens of thousands of maternal deaths. The US government also severed support for the UN Population Fund, limiting the agency’s ability to provide life-saving care for women and girls, often in crisis zones.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has sought to overhaul the US State Department’s structure by sharply reducing the State Department’s staffing and global role, including by requesting a 29 percent decrease in funding for the State Department and international aid.In April, the US carried out a targeted military strike on the al Shayrat Syrian airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 civilians. The April strike was not accompanied by a clear strategy for continued engagement in Syria.During his first foreign trip in May, which began in Saudi Arabia, Trump announced a US$110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, and pledged to address human rights concerns through “gradual reforms.” Secretary Tillerson voiced concern during the same trip about lack of free speech in Iran, while ignoring equally onerous restrictions in Saudi Arabia.In June, the US Senate voted 53-47 against a proposal that would have banned $510 million in arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of its role in the conflict in Yemen; a similar measure garnered only 27 votes in 2016. Also that month, the Trump administration announced it might withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) over purported bias against Israel, among other concerns.In July 2016, the US Congress extended through 2019 its authority to freeze assets and ban visas of Venezuelan officials accused of abuses against anti-government demonstrators. In 2017, the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on Venezuelan officials, including President Maduro, and economic sanctions that prohibit dealings in new securities that the Venezuelan government and its state oil company issue. President Trump’s August threat to use military force against Venezuela met with widespread criticism in the region.In August, the State Department announced that it had re-allocated some of Egypt’s US assistance and had frozen additional monies and military assistance, subject to democracy and human rights conditions.However, joint military exercises that had been on hiatus resumed the next day. After months of review, President Trump announced his administration’s new policy on Afghanistan, calling for more US troops, expanded airstrikes, and looser rules of engagement governing anti-Taliban combat operations. The policy also calls on Pakistan to do more to prevent terrorists from harboring there, and on India to play a more influential regional role.Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September, Trump reaffirmed his commitment to an “America First” agenda and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea,” and referred to Iran as a “rogue nation” and to the Iran nuclear deal as an “embarrassment.”The US did not publicly support calls at the UNHRC for a commission of inquiry into abuses in Yemen, but was active during negotiations and ultimately joined consensus on a resolution to create an international investigation.In November, Trump traveled to Asia, visiting China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam while in the region for the ASEAN summit in the Philippines. During the trip, Trump boasted of his good relations with authoritarian leaders and did not publicly comment on core human rights concerns, including the Rohingya crisis.As the fighting against the extremist group Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria continued, the number of US airstrikes and the number of civilian casualties increased significantly with little acknowledgement by the Pentagon. Strikes also resumed in Libya and increased in pace in Somalia. Trump reportedly changed US policy for drone strikes outside conventional war zones to allow attacks on lower-level terrorism suspects in more countries, with less oversight, and greater secrecy. The CIA was reportedly granted authority to carry out covert drone strikes in Afghanistan.The Trump administration was considering withdrawing from the UNHRC, primarily because of concerns about the body's membership and its dedicated agenda item on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Although the council's membership includes some serial rights violators, this has not prevented it from successfully addressing a wide range of human rights issues.