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I asked this question a few days ago, and I’ll take a shot at answering it. Trump came into office saying he would appoint THE BEST PEOPLE. What we have seen instead is incompetence, turmoil, serial turnovers, numerous corruption scandals and many crucial government positions left unfilled. We have lots of “acting” heads of this or that, but looking at the people who have actually been confirmed is a good way to gauge the depth of the cynicism and the contempt that Trump and Republicans feel for the United States of America.A lot of the inadequate staffing is inevitable. Smart, thoughtful, qualified people tend to believe in the fact-based universe. Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who lies all the time, ignores intelligence and informed opinions, governs via tweets and uses public office to enrich himself — so, quality people in every field are going to think twice about going to work for someone that rude and insulting, that dishonest and that likely to stain and compromise, forever, the reputations of those who serve in his administration.But a lot of the incompetence of the administration is deliberate — intentional. Just as fewer and fewer Republicans believe in American democracy (it’s “mob rule!” they insist), fewer and fewer of them believe in government, in the traditional sense. They prefer the Russian model of oligarchs running a gangster state. They see the entire Federal government as some kind of commie plot. They sneer at public service, and consider people who devote their lives to it, serving both Democratic and Republican administrations in a nonpartisan, dedicated way, to be suspect. They refer to these people who keep government running, and maintain continuity in our agencies over time, as the Deep State. Career civil servants have, indeed, kept things functioning even with Kaos Agent Trump in charge, for over two years … but every month there are fewer of them, as they leave our government in droves, pushed out by this administration. They are replaced by — a vacuum. And that will be a very bad thing if Trump’s threatened trade wars crash the economy, or if his efforts to generate high ratings for himself by threatening wars and then making friendly gestures results in a real war. In a time of national emergency, there may well be no grown-ups left in the room.Besides hating good government in general, Republicans feel special enmity for those who insist science is real. They humiliate and harass top scientists, transferring them around, forbidding people in government to publish real science papers, discouraging them from using terms like “science-based” and “evidence-based,” delaying and burying government reports and research with conclusions that contradict the administration’s lies, and barring people from attending international conferences where established, proven concepts like harmful man-made climate change are discussed.Since this administration’s assault on the reality-based universe is focused on science, it’s no surprise Trump put Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt was saturated in fossil fuel money, (he’s a Koch brothers pet), hates the EPA, had sued it fourteen times — so, he was a natural to run it, since Republicans like to have a fox running every government hen house.In a little over a year, there were fourteen investigations by different government agencies into Pruitt’s corrupt/illegal practices. He gave illegal raises to cronies. He had an obsession with secrecy and lack of transparency, liberally spending money on items like his Get Smart-type “cone of silence” booth. He told his security people in cars to use flashing lights and sirens, regularly, to get him through DC traffic to places like his favorite restaurant. He had a mania for hiring extra security people. He had security people pick up his dry cleaning, and go out to look for his special moisturizer. He slavishly worked to empower the industries the EPA keeps tabs on and is supposed to impose fines on, for violations. He fired scientists and replaced them with fossil fuel industry people. He used taxpayer money to fly everywhere first class or business class or on private jets and stay at luxury hotels, costing us hundreds of thousands. He set up a sweetheart rental deal for himself and his daughter in a DC lobbyist’s condo.Pruitt’s level of corruption was breathtaking, even for the Trump administration, and he was pressured to resign in 2018. Now we have former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler continuing Pruitt’s job of running/dismantling the EPA. It probably goes without saying, but Wheeler does not believe science is real, either. A lot of Trump’s people are so incompetent and so focused on self-enrichment, it limits the damage they do, but Wheeler is a busy boy; he is better than Pruitt at changing Obama-era policy and perverting the mission of the EPA, so that not only does more carbon spew into our atmosphere, but also more methane, plus mercury and other things that sicken and kill a lot of Americans. Here are some pieces on him and on what our EPA has been up to:Opinion | This Coal Lobbyist Should Not Run the E.P.A.E.P.A. Rule Change Could Let Dirtiest Coal Plants Keep Running (and Stay Dirty)Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into AirPresident Trump’s Retreat on the Environment Is Affecting Communities Across AmericaTrump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate ScienceAnother notable Trump administration Swamp Dweller was Tom Price, whom Trump made our Secretary of Health and Human Services (and of course Republicans in the Senate confirm Trump’s stinking nominees of this kind). He’s a Tea Party guy, so naturally, as a doctor, he worked on a healthcare plan as an alternative to the ACA that would cover far fewer people and give them shoddier coverage. He doesn’t think it’s important that parents vaccinate their children. He not only opposes abortion, he has claimed no woman has ever struggled to pay for basic contraception. He made stock market decisions affected by policy he was involved in. As head of HHS, he fought for repeal of the individual mandate: “repeal” with no “replace,” of course — though Republicans pretended as they took power that they had a health plan of their own.Price pretended getting rid of the individual mandate wouldn’t result in millions of people losing coverage. Like Pruitt, Price had a penchant for private chartered planes, and he also liked to take military flights — to get to cities that are easily accessible from DC by car or train. He cost tax payers one million with this nonsense, and offered to pay back $50,000. Eventually, he had to resign. Now, our HHS Secretary is Alex Azar, a former head of Eli Lilly and a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. He is, naturally, also focused on repealing the ACA with no “replace.”Betsy DeVos is married to the heir of the incredibly lucrative, Christian Fundamentalist pyramid-scheme company Amway. She has spent years promoting school vouchers and charter schools and undermining the American system of public education. Her efforts have had a dismal effect on the schools of Michigan; the charter school program she championed there is a disaster. So, naturally, she is now our Secretary of Education. She has no degree in the subject. Her Senate confirmation hearings were eye-opening, as she read quotes plagiarized from Obama administration people, expressed bewilderment over some basic rubrics for measuring how students and schools are doing, and said people might need guns in schools to fight off grizzly bears.Even Republican Senators had trouble voting for her, and Mike Pence had to step in and break the tie. DeVos seems to think that historically black colleges are examples of “school choice” — not understanding what caused them to be founded. She has suggested it’s okay for private schools to refuse to accept LGBT kids or black kids — since it’s all about “choice.” She has worked to take away protection for students who take out loans, and standards to protect students from gimmicky for-profit colleges. She appointed a former dean of DeVry to supervise investigations into scam colleges like DeVry. She does her best to cut funding for the Special Olympics and for programs for kids with disabilities — she has sabotaged their rights that were protected under law.Rick Perry was a governor of Texas who wanted to be president. He memorably ran a campaign ad talking about how it was wrong that President Obama was preventing children from celebrating Christmas (?!) and wrong that gays could serve openly in the military, and how Perry wanted to bring America back to Christian values, and end the “war on religion.” Ironically, the background music of this ad ripped off Appalachian Spring, by gay Jewish New York communist atheist composer Aaron Copland, whose parents were immigrants to Brooklyn:Also when he was running for president in 2011/2012, Perry said in a debate that the US should eliminate three government departments. He mentioned the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and as for the third one? "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.” The department he wanted to eliminate but was too dumb to remember the name of later turned out to be the Department of Energy. So, in a nice little joke on America — a way to give the finger to us all — Trump and the Republicans have made Rick Perry our nation’s Secretary of Energy, leading that department! Energy has to do with science, so from the GOP perspective it’s great that Perry is a Fundamentalist who doesn’t think science is real, and would like to see Creationism taught in schools. Perry pooh poohs concerns about climate change. He says “the science is still out” on whether people cause it. He says African countries should use fossil fuels to create better lighting; it would lead to fewer rapes. He goes after the Sierra Club for "exploiting the struggle of those most affected by climate change." He remains on the board of a huge energy company. (Holy conflict of interest, Batman!) He may be leaving soon, to find ways to make more money.Rick Perry Is Done Pretending to Know What the Energy Department DoesWilbur Ross is our Secretary of Commerce. He’s a big believer in Trump’s trade wars; he thinks tariffs on China will modify their behavior, instead of causing them to buy soybeans elsewhere, screwing American farmers. Ross also is a fan of trade wars with Europe. Ross lied to the Department of Ethics, in writing, and said he had divested all of his financial holdings. For most of 2017 he owned stakes in companies that were in China, tied to Putin’s son-in-law and involved in other areas it was now his job to regulate. He has diddled with stocks and engaged in insider trading while in office. He met with Chevron execs to discuss oil and gas in 2018 while his wife owned $250,000 in Chevron stocks. When Trump threw a tantrum and shut down our government over his wall (“I own the shutdown! Except I don’t! Except I do! Except I don’t!”) Ross suggested that Federal workers who were in crisis because they were not receiving paychecks should just go take out loans from the bank, and pay a little interest later. He couldn’t understand why they were going to food banks.Ross and Trump recently had a big defeat; they can’t include a question on the census about citizenship that was designed to intimidate Latino citizens who have loved ones who are undocumented — it was intended to keep those citizens from responding, so the places where they live won’t receive adequate Federal funding, for healthcare and roads and education, in terms of how many people live there. Roberts’ conservative Supreme Court is fine with Republican gerrymandering, which distorts our democracy — but they found Ross’s lying as he made the case about the census so lame and so blatant, they just couldn’t sign off on it.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left her job recently. She will not be missed. Her lies for Trump extend way beyond pretending not to know whether Norway is a predominantly white country. (Trump had said in a meeting that we get too many immigrants from sh*thole countries — why can’t we have more from places like Norway?) She pretended not to know, in May of 2018, that the intelligence community had concluded that the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections to help Trump win. (This is our Secretary of Homeland Security talking.) Months later, she said she didn’t think Russia had been trying to help either side — after Putin had said he’d wanted Trump to win. Nielsen was the one who started implementing Trump’s policy of family separation in 2018 — and she lied about it, again and again, sometimes under oath to Congress. She said they had no such policy when they had already separated 2,000 children from their families, and Jeff Sessions and others were bragging about the innovative approach. She said Trump could not sign an executive order ending family separations, then was at the ceremony where he signed the meaningless order he had no intention of respecting. Nielsen expressed to Congress that she did not know how many children and how many people apprehended at the border had died in custody during her tenure.There is now even more incoherence and chaos in the DHS. The current Acting Secretary has appointed Mark Morgan to run Customs and Border Protection. According to the New York Times, Morgan won over Trump on TV in 2017. “In one appearance on Fox News, Mr. Morgan said that when he looked into the eyes of detained migrant children, he saw a ‘soon-to-be MS-13 gang member.’” Now, there’s the guy to turn around the problem of children dying and being traumatized in custody, and our national honor being stained by inhumane abuses!‘A Constant Game of Musical Chairs’ Amid Another Homeland Security Shake-UpIn another Times piece, by Gail Collins in January about this stinking, putrid cabinet, we learn that: “Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who once advocated an end to birthright citizenship and policies that would require employees to speak English, was picked last month to oversee United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for legal immigration.”Opinion | Help Pick the Worst of TrumpJeff Sessions was Trump’s Attorney General until the 2018 elections. Sessions is a good-old-boy racist who lost the chance to be a Federal judge in 1986 due to a letter from Coretta Scott King calling him out for his racist behavior as an attorney in Alabama. Senator Elizabeth Warren cited what Ted Kennedy had said about that earlier nomination, and started to read Coretta Scott King’s letter, which had been read into the Congressional record in 1986. Republicans objected, “nevertheless, she persisted,” and McConnell and Republicans shut Warren down — they voted to silence her. Jeff Sessions perjured himself before the Senate during his confirmation hearings, saying he’d never talked to the Russians during the campaign and didn’t know of anyone else in the Trump campaign who had. Once this lie was exposed, he had to come back to the Senate to do some ‘splaining, talking about his honor as a Southern gentleman or some such, and wound up recusing himself from supervising the Mueller Investigation. Trump never forgave him for it, and Trump liked to publicly humiliate him, regularly.Sessions hung on because being AG allowed him to pursue policies dear to his heart — policies otherwise in tune with the Trump administration. He was the one who proudly unveiled the policy of hurting refugee children on purpose, to punish and deter their parents who brought them here, seeking asylum! There was a good deal of bi-partisan consensus that we need criminal justice reform, that people shouldn’t go to jail for decades for marijuana charges when pot is legal in many states, and that people who are addicted need treatment rather than to be treated like criminals. But Sessions did away with all those ideas. He’s against even medical marijuana. He was proud that we’re the most incarcerated country, he was into mandatory sentencing rules and against consent decrees for police departments found to be chronically racist. He was into cops seizing property from people who were suspected but not convicted, and fining the poor to the max. Our Attorney General seemed not to see Hawaii as a real state, saying, of Trump’s proposed racist Muslim Ban, that he was "amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power," though the Supreme Court, it turned out, had issues with the original version of the Travel Ban also.Trump has said he wants an Attorney General who will be his “Roy Cohn.” Roy Cohn broke the law, talking privately to the judge and getting the death sentence for both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died in the electric chair. He was the right-hand man of Senator Joe McCarthy who called everyone who opposed him a communist; though gay himself, Cohn helped enhance the Lavender Scare. Cohn threatened to “wreck the Army” if they didn’t give his friend David Schine cushy treatment once he was drafted, which led to the Army-McCarthy hearings and Joseph Welch standing up to McCarthy: "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Later as a lawyer in NYC, Cohn represented Mafiosos like John Gotti, and Donald Trump, and the guys who ran Studio 54, and he and they were part of that Studio 54 partying scene. Cohn represented Trump when the government went after him and his father for their racist rental policies — not showing apartments to black applicants, marking black people’s applications with a “C” for “Colored,” etc. Cohn got Trump off. He introduced Trump to Rupert Murdoch. As Cohn was with the young rat-f*cker and self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone, Roy Cohn was key in teaching Donald Trump to have no morals whatsoever.How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed AmericaSessions obeyed the laws sometimes, and was capable of feeling shame, and so, even though he advanced the racist agenda of Trump, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, Trump became disgusted with him. Trump got rid of Sessions and brought in Scott Whitaker as acting Attorney General — a guy who’d auditioned for the job by writing an op ed piece saying Mueller’s investigation into Trump was going too far, and retweeted a piece calling the investigation a “lynch mob.” Whitaker had run a shady, opaque group that pretended to be non-partisan with the Orwellian acronym name FACT that urged investigations of Hillary Clinton. He’d also been involved with a group supposedly promoting inventions — a group that rivals Trump University and Trump Model Management for the rancidness of its sleazy, dishonest practices. It created a false impression that some inventions it promoted were successful. Whitaker threatened people who were out to expose the company. It sold deep, “masculine toilets” to manly men with penises so long, they’d land in the water in a toilet bowl of the normal height, and it claimed to have Bigfoot’s DNA, or proof that it had been collected.So many people had a problem with the endlessly acting, never confirmed Whitaker, that Trump brought in William Barr to be our AG. And now, at last, the Donald has his Roy Cohn! He has, in Barr, both a Mafia Don’s lawyer and a consigliere to him. Barr is a longtime proponent of mass incarceration, ending parole, new laws to monitor people’s phone records without getting proper vetting of these laws — and he helped orchestrate George Herbert Walker Bush pardoning a bunch of Bush’s Iran/Contra co-conspirators. Like Whitaker, Barr auditioned for the job of AG, letting Trump know he’d get him off in relation to Mueller in 2017 by saying it was fine for Trump to fire Sally Yates, there’s more point to investigating Hillary and Uranium One than there is to investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, and the Mueller Investigation into obstruction of justice was “asinine”; it was looking like a plot “to overthrow the president.” Barr lied about the contents of the Mueller Report months before releasing it, lied under oath to Congress about whether Mueller had communicated to him what Mueller thought of Barr’s representation of the report … and Barr is fine with using the word “spying” for those in our intelligence community who, after presenting evidence to FISA judges, conducted authorized investigations of what happened between Trump and Russia in 2016. He says the term “spying” isn’t pejorative. Senator Kamala Harris made mincemeat of Barr for his squishy, dishonest testimony in the Senate:After that, Barr blew off a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight Committee, and they held him in Contempt of Congress.It’s not good for the United States to have an Attorney General who is a liar, a perjurer, a man with contempt for firewalls, and contempt for the Separation of Powers and the system of Checks and Balances, and who forgets that he is America’s lawyer, not the president’s. But that’s Bill Barr.Alexander Acosta is our Secretary of Labor. He is in the news right now for the sweetheart deal he gave child predator Jeffrey Epstein back in Florida. The prosecution lawyers met with Epstein’s lawyers in the spirit of good ol’ boy camaraderie, and cut a deal where he only got a slap on the wrist; for thirteen months, Epstein had to sleep in a Federal facility but he could go work in his office six days a week … We’re talking about a man who molested multiple children, and trafficked in children. But then, rich white men in this country are above the law. The deal also protected his co-conspirators, known and unknown from prosecution. Of course, President Trump has been accused of having sex with a little girl at one of Epstein’s parties, (there is a corroborating witness, a woman who said she recruited the child to come to the party and witnessed the rape) and has joked about how Jeff is a great guy, they both like beautiful women, Jeff likes them really young …Alex Acosta saw to it that important information was withheld from the judge in the case — and crucial information was also illegally withheld from the many young women who had been abused as children by Epstein. They did not even know the deal had been cut. They never had a chance to appear at his sentencing hearing and say what they thought of Epstein’s light sentencing for a charge of “prostitution.” At last, Epstein (along with, possibly, his co-conspirators) is being prosecuted properly, by New York and Federal authorities. July 12th Update: Alex Acosta is gone. Yay!Ben Carson is a doctor, a neurosurgeon, a man with some impressive credits and also some very odd comments and actions on his scorecard, a sometime presidential candidate … and he had no experience, over the course of his career, in managing a big agency or dealing directly with policies involving housing and urban development. So, why did Trump choose Carson to run HUD? Was it that our president saw the word “urban” and thought … oh, urban … I better give it to the black guy …? With Donald Trump, who knows? It’s also possible that Trump liked how Carson had opposed HUD’s long-term anti-discrimination policies. Another fox to run another hen house! Carson seemed open, during his confirmation, to steering government money to Trump’s businesses. His son, Ben Carson Jr, has been cashing in on his father’s position. The Trump administration keeps eliminating HUD money that Dr. Carson promises the public will be part of infrastructure spending. In his testimony before Congress over the last few years, Dr. Carson has repeatedly made it evident that he doesn’t understand basic things HUD does. Here he is in 2019:He said after this hearing that Democrats were using “Saul Alinsky” tactics.Carson fired a career HUD official for refusing to spend more than $5,000, the legal limit, on new office furnishings for him. He went on to spend $31,000 of tax-payer dollars on a new dining set. He lied about whether he’d had input in choosing it.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the brain child of Elizabeth Warren. It was authorized by Dodd-Frank and it was meant to protect average people against predatory lenders and others who had screwed us and had led to the 2008 crash. Richard Cordray, a Warren ally, ran it well, He appointed a person who should have taken it over when he left — but Trump trashed the protocol and put in Mick Mulvaney to run it. Mulvaney is supposedly fiscally cautious, but running the Office of Management and Budget, he was fine with Trump dramatically swelling the deficit with tax cuts for the rich. Now he says “nobody cares” about the deficit. Mulvaney told Trump to cut Social Security and Medicare. He introduced himself to Gary Cohn saying: “Hi, I’m a right-wing nutjob.” He got confirmed at OMB despite the fact that he failed to pay payroll taxes for years on his kids’ nanny. As a Congressman, Mulvaney attacked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau non-stop, calling it “sick” and “sad” and “a joke.” He co-sponsored legislation to get rid of it. So, of course, he was the perfect guy to run it for Trump! By 2019 he had undermined its enforcement and regulatory powers. It lets banks and businesses get away with screwing consumers once again, no problem! It has dropped investigations of predatory payday lenders. A leading business group praised Mulvaney for his “passivity.” But he fired all 25 members of the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board after eleven of them criticized him — he wasn’t passive about that! Now Mulvaney is Trump’s Chief of Staff.Donald Trump spent the 2016 campaign bellowing about how he was going to “Drain the Swamp!” He cheerfully admitted he’d been handed that slogan, he thought it was stupid and meaningless, but crowds loved it so he kept yelling it. He criticized Hillary Clinton for being too close to Goldman Sachs — and then brought Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin into his administration. Let’s talk about Mnuchin. He is our Secretary of the Treasury. He says his number one priority is dismantling parts of Dodd-Frank. When asked about the threat of AI taking jobs away from people, he says oh, don’t worry, that’s 50 or 100 years off. Mnuchin had a “Mnuchin Rule,” saying they wouldn’t give the rich a big tax break. He walked it back. He said Trump’s tax cut for the rich would finance itself. Budget deficits rose 17% by the next year. Mnuchin had not ordered the Treasury to do any analysis of the proposed huge tax cuts and their impact. The Treasury ultimately issued a one-page document acknowledging that the tax cuts would not pay for themselves. Mnuchin has ignored Congress’s subpoena of Trump’s tax records, saying they didn’t want them for legitimate reasons, even though the law clearly states that the Secretary of the Treasury “shall furnish” requested tax records of any individual to Congress. What are laws worth, after all? He can be remarkably rude when talking to Congress, especially when speaking to House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters.He told parents to take their kids to the Lego Batman Movie he executive produced, right after acknowledging, in the same interview, it was unethical for him to promote things he’s involved in. Mnuchin is another Swamp Dweller who loves him some plane rides: government planes, military planes … he reimbursed us for his wife’s part in one plane jaunt, nearly $600, in a trip that cost tax payers nearly $27,000. He wanted a military jet for their honeymoon, but later said: "I'm very sensitive to the use of government funds. I've never asked the government to pay for my personal travel ... The story was quite misreported.”Eleanor Chao likes to ride some of the same planes as Mnuchin. When she was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor, she was famous for sticking it to the American workers whose rights she was supposed to uphold, and siding with those who exploit them. She did not defend laws protecting wages and hours and workplace safety. She was fine with people being underpaid, and with mines that ignored safety rules — which led to a number of miners’ deaths. Chao is now our Secretary of Transportation. She labels a lot of her time on the job “private,” avoiding transparency in terms of what she does with it. But she does lots of public interviews, as Secretary of Transportation, with her father, a shipping tycoon with ships that go to China. Her sister now runs the family business. The company gets lots of very unusual deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars in China; Chao is using her position to help her family’s business cash in, as the Trumps do. Chao pledged in 2017 to sell her stock in a road-paving company, but she lied; only when newspapers exposed her lie in 2019 did she sell the stock. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — the man who delights in undermining our Constitution by not letting President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee get considered by the Senate as the Constitution stipulates, etc. In 2017, Chao had her aide Todd Inman become a special envoy between the Department of Transportation and Kentucky, the state McConnell represents in the Senate. This led to $78 million in sweetheart deal projects for pro-McConnell counties in Kentucky. (No conflict of interest there!) Inman had worked for McConnell’s campaigns in the past. Now he’s Chao’s Chief of Staff. Chao’s father and family have given millions to McConnell and his campaigns.Mike Flynn was President Trump’s National Security Adviser for several weeks when Trump first came into office. Before that, Flynn had an Army career: a Lieutenant General. He led our Defense Intelligence Agency for a while under Obama. He was forced out, perhaps because his close relations with a Russian woman made him seem potentially compromised, or because of his apoplectic views about Muslims, or his nutty management style, abusive treatment of staff, and truth-challenged pronouncements that caused his staff to talk about “Flynn facts.” He retired from the military soon after. He became a consultant, and got $45,000 for a speech at an RT dinner in Russia where he was seated next to Putin. He criticized Erdogan in Turkey during the attempted coup there. But then he went to work for the Turkish government. He wrote an op ed attacking Erdogan’s opponent, Gulen, without disclosing that he worked for a Turkish company. In March 2017 he registered as a foreign agent who had received over $500,000 in lobbying money. But that was after the election — and after he had left the Trump White House.During the 2016 campaign Flynn was an adviser to Trump. He gave a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, attacking Hillary Clinton and leading/encouraging the chants of “Lock her up!” He said if he’d done a tenth of what she’d done, he’d be in jail. He re-tweeted Pizza-gate garbage. President Obama when he met Trump after the election warned him not to hire Flynn to hear sensitive national security information. Trump ignored it. Chris Christie also warned Trump not to hire Flynn. Flynn himself told people he was under investigation. Before Jeff Sessions was confirmed, Sally Yates was Acting Attorney General. She warned Trump that Flynn should not be his National Security Adviser anymore because there was proof Flynn had lied to Pence and others when he said his phone call to Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office was just to wish Kislyak Merry Christmas. In fact, Flynn told Kislyak that Russia should ignore the sanctions imposed on Russia by Obama, who was still president, because Trump would come in and repeal them — did this in violation of the Logan Act, which says a private citizen should not negotiate with foreign powers in US government disputes. Because Flynn had lied about the call, he was compromised — the Russians could blackmail him. Trump ignored Yates’ warning and kept Flynn around hearing highly classified intelligence for two more weeks. Trump fired Yates. Flynn had to resign when his lie became publicly known. Trump leaned on FBI Director James Comey to “let Flynn go,” and when Comey would not pledge that the FBI would not investigate Flynn and Trump, Trump fired Comey over “the Russia thing,” as he told Lester Holt in an interview on national television and told the Russians in the Oval Office the next day. This led to the Mueller Investigation.Mueller went after Flynn (and his son) for, among other things, plotting to kidnap Gulen, the enemy of Erdogan in Turkey; Gulen lives here. Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, but got into trouble because he kept on lying when he said he was cooperating. The Trump administration improperly contacted him to try to learn what he was saying, and dangled indirect offers of a pardon. Michael Flynn was one of 34 people indicted in the course of the Mueller Investigation, which according to Republicans has uncovered nothing.Mueller's investigation is done. Here are the 34 people he indicted along the wayOther criminal people from the Trump campaign and administration exposed by the investigation include Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen who illegally paid off women Trump slept with during the campaign and is now in jail (court papers call Trump aka “Individual One” Cohen’s un-indicted co-conspirator) and fellow Roy Cohn protege and campaign adviser Roger Stone who is also in jail, for lying to Congress and witness tampering. Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort took the Trump Tower meeting with Jared and Don Jr to get dirt from the Russians on Hillary Clinton. (An invitation to collude with the Russians? “I love it!”) Manafort had groomed Russia’s stooge leader in Ukraine before grooming one here, and gave the Russians the Trump campaign’s internal polling data. (No, collusion, though, right?) Manafort had a plea deal he violated, continuing to lie to investigators and to coordinate with the Trump team. Now he’s in jail, for tax fraud and bank fraud. He’s another foreign lobbyist who registered as one a little “late.”George Papadopoulos was a Trump campaign aide who only served fourteen days in prison for lying to the FBI. He bragged to an Australian diplomat in 2016 about how the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians, which helped lead to the FBI investigation into the matter. He also offered more substantiation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ lied to Congress. Attorney Alex Van Der Swann only served thirty days in jail for lying. Rick Gates, like Michael Flynn, has had his sentencing delayed, as he continues to cooperate and provide more dirt. Richard Pinedo served six months for identity fraud. He helped the Russian cyber trolls get onto Facebook and influence the election. The other people indicted are Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Manafort gave the polling data to, and a bunch of other Russians.Compare that nest of crooks to Bill Clinton’s campaigns and administration. Compare it to the Obama campaigns and administration.Here’s one more Trump Swamp creature, one very close to the Swamp Lord — Jared Kushner! His father is a sleazy real estate developer. Because his father’s brother-in-law was cooperating with Feds against him, Jared’s dad hired a prostitute, had her go sleep with his brother-in-law and taped the encounter to send to his sister. He went to jail for that witness tampering, plus illegal campaign contributions, plus tax evasion. Jared came away from the experience furious on his father’s behalf — and made sure Chris Christie, who negotiated his father’s plea agreement, did not serve in Trump’s administration. He was indignant that his father didn’t get out of prison early, and he has no sense that what his father did was wrong. In other words, Jared Kushner, like his father-in-law Donald Trump, is a princeling con man raised to break the law without batting an eye. Jared’s father’s donations to Harvard may have helped Jared get in. The two of them made the disastrous $1.8 billion purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue just before the 2008 crash. Jared worked closely with Manafort during Trump’s campaign on media strategy, and together they hired Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica. Once Trump was elected, Jared lied multiple times on his security clearance forms, omitting hundreds of meetings with foreign nationals. He’d re-submit them and lie again. (To lie intentionally even once on those forms is a felony that can lead to jail time.) A person as compromised as Jared would never be granted clearance to hear sensitive intelligence — except Trump over-rode all the professionals and got him clearance anyhow. Trump said he had no role in getting Jared clearance, but then, Trump lies all the time.So, what is Jared Kushner in charge of ? What isn’t he in charge of! He’s been in charge of peace between Palestine and Israel; apparently his plan is stuff seen many times before, and a non-starter. He’s in charge of solving the opioid crisis (how’s that going?) and information-technology contracting. He was heavily involved in us selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for $100 billion. All government correspondence is supposed to be over official systems (do you remember Hillary getting criticized for using private email for government work? Guess what Jared has used?) and there is supposed to be a record kept of it, for history. (Again, do you remember Hillary getting in trouble because people thought some of her official emails might not have been saved? It was for the historical record.) Jared communicates with MBS of Saudi Arabia via encrypted apps with no record. He tipped off MBS about guys in Saudi Arabia who might be a threat to MBS, and they were rounded up and taken to a hotel. They’re not a threat to Adnan Khashoggi’s murderer anymore. Jared owes a billion dollars in debt. Our nation’s foreign policy of punishing our ally Qatar, and our policy toward Saudi Arabia, seem at least partially to have been geared over the last two years toward finally getting someone to pay for the 666 Fifth Avenue boondoggle that Jared is still saddled with.During the campaign, Jared also had calls with Kislyak, and of course went to the Trump Tower meeting, and may have leaned on Flynn to talk to people in the Middle East to undermine Obama’s policies after Trump was elected but Obama was still in office. He may have told Flynn to talk to Kislyak. Jared was very keen on getting Comey fired — he figured Democrats would be great with it because Comey had violated the Hatch Act several times to make Hillary look bad. But, it turned out Democrats had a problem with Trump firing him for the reasons he did. Jared and Ivanka cash in on their position in various obvious and offensive ways, and their conflicts of interest are pretty straightforward.That’s not the whole Rogues’ Gallery, but it’s an intro to a lot of the key ones. I feel like we should be aware of them. Their faces should haunt our nightmares. I’m sorry it took so long — sorry there was so much to write about. But no, none of those Trump appointees is focused on making the agencies and departments they run, and the US government overall, succeed. These are not THE BEST PEOPLE. These are THE WORST PEOPLE. Either they actively seek to destroy the organizations they head, or they are primarily focused on making a buck. Yes, that’s often true when Republicans are in office. But Trump likes to talk about how the things he does are unbelievable, amazing, nobody’s ever seen anything like it before — and in this case, the hyperbole is justified. The graft of these grifters, the idiocy of some of the drivel that comes out of their mouths, the slimy, wormy filth that they have reduced our government to … is simply unprecedented. Trump has not drained The Swamp. Trump is The Swamp Lord. Trump has widened and deepened The Swamp, and added extra scum. Again, we’ve been relatively lucky so far, as we were during the first eight months under W. But luck can run out, and things can go seriously wrong. We could get in a situation where we need statesmen, not con men, and wisdom, not smug, self-satisfied ignorance. And even if no seismic national emergency arises, the policies that do not seem to have done too much damage yet will continue to hurt us (and the whole planet) for a long, long time to come.

Let me tell you my 2 year experience since moving to UK from France: I work in ship operations and came from a well respected major container shipper in France. I got a position here at one of the largest port operators in UK and by looking at their website and linked in page, I really had high expectations.In general in the container shipping world, every ship and port in the world uses the international standardized “baplie” .edi file for receiving and reviewing the ship’s loading plan. This stowage plan is composed either by the ship’s chief officer, by a central planner, or in the cases of small ships by the local port planners. The plan of a container ship looks something like thisThe little squares you see are the containers stowed on the ship, and powerful software assist the ship’s chief officer in determining the safe condition, segregation of dangerous goods on board and ship’s stability on departure, and also assist the terminal planners in determining the optimal loading sequence in order to make the most of the available cranes, labor and time in relation to the yard location of the containers on the load list that need to be loaded on the ship. The ship’s agent send in advance the load list in a compatible format that is easily imported in the planning software.Now imagine my shock when I arrived in UK to meet with my employer and see my work place, when I saw the terminal staff working on the ship’s plan using an EXCEL FILE! To this day I do not understand how a container terminal with a healthy consistent traffic does not have the technical capacity to produce or even read an .edi file! Even third world countries like Somalia have this in their port!Whenever a ship comes to he port, they are kindly asked to send the arrival (discharge plan) in either pdf or excel format file, which is embarrassing to say the least. Whenever a ship is loading in the terminal, they will a receive an excel file on which the planners MANUALLY TYPE IN each container serial, with it’s associated weight and DG information. I don’t even know from where to start to say what a time consuming inefficient and primitive way of planning this is.The ship receives the excel file, and based on it, their chief officer also has manually create each box in their software (similar to the photo above) with it’s associated weight and dangerous goods info, in order to check the departure condition, ship’s stability and calculate the required ballast for the next trip. In all other ports they would receive the international used compatible .edi file that contains the stow bay plan and be able to check all of this in less than 15 minutes…The terminal planer, not only has to check each box, type them in the excel file, but he also has to answer the phone, and respond to radio calls from the crane drivers that need direction on which bay of the ship to load next without clashing with the other crane. All of this while having printed excel files, and yard bay sheets all around his desk in order to keep some sort of track of what has been planned already, and what has been sent to the crane. So instead of having a nice clean desk with multiple screens (like I had in France), you end up with a general chaos, something similar to the photo below (there were actually a lot more papers around than I could catch in the photo)The terminal does have a cargo inventory management system, which tells you at least if the box is on site or not. So each time we receive the load list for the ship, we manually check each box if it’s on site or not. The software is very slow , crashes every 20 minutes, and the terminal’s IT infrastructure is at least 15 years old. (edit: servers running on Windows 2000 Server edition)Which brings us to the load list that we receive from the local cargo office of the shipping line. For some unknown reason their staff is unable to send the load list in an excel format, or even a searchable pdf format from which we can quickly copy serials, or quick search the file to find dangerous goods information for a specific box. They always send us scanned pages which show up as images, which are completely useless in the digital age. I asked them in several turns why they don’t send us a searchable pdf instead of scanned pages, and their response was “our system is not set up like that”. After having a massive argument with the terminal management and the shipping line corporate management in Rotterdam, they finally realized that they can just forward us the pdf load list they receive from Rotterdam, instead of printing it for checking, and than scanning it to send it back to us. These are old people, who barely know how to use a computer so this is no surprise at all.Unfortunately this level of incompetence and backward thinking is present all around in UK, most freight forwarders, transport planners, and devanning agents simply prefer to call the terminal and ask for information, rather than sending an email and reading the reply which usually comes back from me or one my colleagues in 5 to 10 minutes. When asked why they do this and always call and interrupt our work (you cannot efficiently multitask when you are on the phone), they simply state that is more convenient for them to call rather than fight with a computer.The company wastes money on absolutely everything and than they complain they have no money for upgrades and more staff. Look for example on the road works they are doing in the terminal: replacing extremely durable reinforced concrete slabs that have lasted for 40 years with a bituminous tarmac that is simply unable to hold the weight of 3 laden containers stacked on top of each other. Even the contractor told them this is a waste of money and time, and they will have to come back in 6 months to redo the patches. And as predicted, the tarmac started to sink under the weight of the containers corner castings just 2 weeks after the work was done. Nonetheless , the works carry on!Safety is very important, company spends a lot of money on huge signs that tell how important safety is. They also spend a lot of money on stuff like: brand new safety caravan that tours the country, visiting each port and holding inside safety campaigns meetings and discussions, despite the fact that each port has a dedicated training/conference room specially built for this! On each safety meeting the same concerns are raised by staff and operators over and over again, and every time the answer is more a less the same: file a report and in the next budgetary meeting we will take it into consideration. Now imagine how f.. up that sounds when a HSE guy with a huge salary tells you that in the back of a brand new 60k caravan on which is written “SAFETY IS OUR NUMBER ONE CONCERN”!Also it seems that the department that handles HSE never communicates with the projects development department, because as soon as the first guys renewed the safety walk corridor paint, the next guys came along and put an electrical transformer in the middle of that safety walk corridorSince COVID19 is all around in the news, company of course took swift action to keep everyone distanced and safe. They put everywhere along the 1 meter wide office hallways signs that tell you to keep 2 meters distance, and that was it! Later on (in August), they sent an almost transparent fabric face cover to everyone by post , together with a letter from the CEO in which he explains how important is safety for the key workers in UK. This action was of course used extensively in their PR posts to show staff wearing the face masks they receive for free from the employer.In the port it's not just the IT infrastructure that is outdated, but also the actual port infrastructure is antique. The dock still uses the original locks from 1914 which were last renovated in the 70’s. This antique piece of infrastructure is the only thing that assures the link of the port to the rest of the world. The lock is rusty, faulty, it often jams, and is leaking water.The port does not have access to a motorway, no access to rail network (there is only a 20th century single string line with weight limitations caused by the brick rail overpasses in the city) , but it dreams of becoming a freeport like Singapore after Brexit;And speaking of Brexit: 90% of the port traffic is with EU ports, especially Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Amsterdam and Antwerp. The transition period for the UK to exit the EU common market and free trade area is almost over, being less than 4 months away. Only now the port management is realizing that they don’t actually have the means or space to implement the mandatory customs checks required from the 1st of January 2021, which will also require large lorry waiting areas. Now they are considering letting the lorries that come off the ferry from Rotterdam to go out of the port freely for the first 6 months of 2021 (same as it is now), and in the mean time they are considering building an off site customs checks and waiting area….that is offsite from the port. I am wondering what is stopping a lorry carrying highly taxable goods or illegal drugs from just driving away once it exits the port, making a quick stop to unload some of the goods, and than proceeding to the off site customs checks area?So is this the most advanced country in Europe?? I certainly think not! I explained and shared my experiences here in UK in detail in other articles on my blog (link is in my bio since I cannot post it here due to quora regulations)

Robert,I suspect my main reason is after Russia Gate, Ukraine Gate and $50m+ wasted in engaging 15 biased FBI, numerous top anti-Trump lawyers, investigations, spying, lying and unpatriotic acts to bring down a duly elected President, and trying to impeach without evidence since 2016, that even the dumbest of mentally ill, personal animus filled, TDS Democrats would now be thinking, there is no there there.Following that, making an economic miracle of debt left by Obama, Bush & Clinton, which was:Bush Clinton $7Trillion, not paid down under punitive interest is now US $9TObama US$8.5 Trillion, not paid down under punitive interest is now US$10.5T##biggest debt ever.That meant no investment in infrastructure, pensions in the toilet, no investment in the military, average hourly wage rate in decline, house building permits lowest ever, banks unable to lend, more blacks & minorities unemployed, that Trump, also obstructed at every turn by Democrats took US$2T debt and made tax benefits to all, including to Industry to rebuild via Capital Additions, has not fallen below 3% growth vs an weak, rounded up Obama 1% average, growth.Just think what would be achieved had Democrats worked on something, anything, in a bi-partisan way, for all?Apart from that?.My favorite is making the biggest self-sacrifice, selfless beyond any I have seen from a US President since WW2, that despite clearly Democrat TDS, their mental illness and ever-increasing amoral standards, that Trump showed courage & moral rectitude, knowing exactly the reaction from those ‘nut jobs & psycho’s’, and their Fake MSM, many who wanted Nuclear WW3, killing billions, just to spite Trump, he was courageous and saved the lives of all those mothers sons & daughters that the Democrat lunatics would fill up as a blockade, a wall of ‘billions’ of dead, of everyone but their own children - Trump extended the hand of discourse to ‘jaw-jaw’, to avoid war wars, Armageddon.‘Otherwise take your pick:-Fighting Sanctuary cities. Not being amoral by making one's own voters pay tax to protect criminals & illegal migrant criminals in Sanctuaries and provide welfare, to those same detritus that will, or have, sodomized, robbed, mugged, harmed, raped, sold drugs too, or killed, their own sons, mothers, wives & daughters; come to think of it ‘what a perfect definition for ‘delusional’.TDSWhooped crooked Hillary.Neil GorsuchConsumer confidence 17 year high>2m jobsLowest jobless claims in 50 years.Mortgage apps 7 years highUnemployment 17 year lowTrump added 298k jobs in his first month (after President Obama said jobs were not coming back!).Women in Entrepreneurship ActGutted Obama Era job herniating RegsEnded the war on coalResurrected coal jobs.Weakened Dodd-Frank regsPromoted buying & hiring AmericanPut in place Economic plan that in the long term seeks to reduce the $22T National Debt, of which 46% including interest payments was created by Obama.Record Dow, the DOW took just 66 days to climb from 19,000 to above 21,000, the fastest 2000 point run EVER.Stock market gained >$3T, improving instantly pensions.Investment from the US Business’Investment from foreign business’.Reduced Debt by $100B in less than the first 4 months.(President Obama increased the US debt in his first 100 days by more than $560 Billion.)The S&P500 broker $20T for the first time in its history.In the history of the DOW, going back to January 1901, the DOW record for most continuous closing high trading days was set in January of 1987 when Ronald Reagan was President. The DOW set closing highs an amazing 12 times in a row that month. On February 28th Trump matches Reagan when the DOW reached a new high for its 12th day in a row!Reduced illegal immigration.Signed a resolution encouraging women in entrepreneurship and STEMBorder wall being built, slowly despite Democrat obstruction.Against killing unwanted born babies.Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement [Pelosi would not even see the Angels]Changed R.E. against ISISRepealed Obama’s ‘terms of engagement’ that put the US lives at greater risk than terrorists.Plan to defeat ISIS.Reduced F35 cost5 Year lobbying ban.Sanctioned Iran.Repealed Iran deal, evidence now proves Nuclear capability of Iran.Responded to Syria with the bombingTax reform plan.Resurrected Pig Iron Smelting & jobs.Withdrew from TPPExited the [Voluntary & unenforced] Paris Accord.Created Crime task force.DOJ targetting MS13Energy Independence.Economic growth.E.O. establishing The American Technology Council.E.O to protect policeE.O. targetting drug cartels. President Trump signed three Executive Orders – 13773, 13774, and 13776 – aimed at cracking down on international criminal organizations, including drug cartels and gangs, and preventing violence against law enforcement officers.E.O. Religious Freedom.E.O. on Obamacare subsidies.E.O. to reduce Federal government waste/excess created by Obama, saving taxpayers potentially hundreds of millions.E.O all federal agencies to create task forces to cut regulations that hurt the economy.Inter State insurance competion on Medic Care.Action against Big Pharma drug prices - cheaper in Mexico etc.Sending Education back to the States.Fixing the V.A.Firing crooked Comey.Travel ban.Keystone pipelineCreated Commission on Opioid Addiction.Combating Human Trafficking.Rollback of Obama Cuba policy.Food stamp use lowest in 7 years.Reduced Whitehouse payroll burden on taxpayers by removing 16,000 unnecessary Obama created jobs.Working for free.A successful trip to Asia.China trade dealCanada & Mexico level-playingfield trade deal.E.U. leveler playing field deal.Designated N. Korea a terrorist stateISIS almost defeated, but not gone.Jerusalem capital of Israel.Tax Reform billBusiness investments up 39% due to tax cuts.Signed 130 bills into law.136 Presidential Proclamations64 E.O’sArmed Ukraine with heavy weapons.Confirmed no more waste of US military lives in lost causes &/or no interest conflicts.Food to Puerto Rico.Various national natural disasters handled.NATO paying its fair share.Encouraged RINO’s to leave.Reinforced Judeo-Christian beliefs.Funded the Military.Placing a hiring freeze on federal employees.Twice tried to pay government employees during the shutdown, but was blocked by Democrats.Sanctioned Russia more time than Obama.Signed the First Step Act criminal justice reform into law, helping especially Blacks, a FIRST.Subsequently pardoned unjustly treated black convicts. Unlike Cuomo & Obama, non were killers.More American employed than ever before & no ‘created fake jobs, unlike Obama.The release of Pastor Brunson from Turkey.Construction jobs up 300k in 2018.Kavanaugh was sworn in despite disgusting, disgraceful, amoral efforts by Democrats.Middle-class income rise is a record.Cut $300m to Pakistan.Cut $200m to Palestinians.Worlds largest oil producer.10million barrels a day.Given Russia, Iran & Turkey stopped re-building aid to Syria, saving taxpayers $230mManufacturing grew faster than in 14 years.Record low black unemploymentWar heroes remains returned from NOKO.Possible peace with NOKO.The release of 3 political US prisoners from NOKO.2026 World CupBlack Business Ownership Under Trump Jumps 400 PERCENT in ONE YEAR [Getty]Youth Unemployment hits 52 year low.Peace between North & South Korea’s.Work REquirement for Welfare.Nominates first woman to head CIA.Black support up to 29%Tax surplus in January.Pay rate highest since 2008.Hispanic unemployment hits low.Proposes reform of Civil Service ‘Hire the best, fire the worst’.Signs Bill to combat synthetic opioids - needs to with Democrats resisting closed border.2017 Record of lifetime appointed Judges.Rolled back $900m in Offshore Obama restrictions.US Imposes Sanctions on 52 People and Entities for Abuse and CorruptionHome build permits hit highest since 2007.Economy growth 5.7% in 1st Q of 2018, remained high since.Stock Market bubble outlasts subversive Federal Reserve rate hikes.$700 Billion Defense Bill.For Trekkies, Space Policy Directive.20% take rate for Corporations, to enable economic growth, create jobs and make efficiencies to infrastructure delivery of products.Capital Additions reduced to 1 year from >20 to enable tax deductibility on buying in & replacing inefficient production machinery.Trumps HHS defines life begins at inception / Moron Dems pass infanticide laws.$285m cut in the UN Budget, benefit for taxpayers.Reduction in refugee applications.WIC Welfare Participation Hit 17Year Low (dropped to 7,283,000 in 2017, its lowest level since 2000 when 7,192,000 participated in the program.)Broadcom to move back to US.A new strategy on Iran.Trump Signs Healthcare Order Expands Choice and Access through associationsWithdrew from Ani-Semitic UNESCO.Tech giants pledge millions to Trump initiative.Federal Reserve; Household Wealth in America at record high of 17 trillion Rising property values and Financial gain.Rolls back Environmental Laws herniating infrastructure re-building time etc.$15b Hurricane Harvey.US Small Business Admin. Centre assistance.Job satisfaction highest since 2005.Repeals Obama’s ridiculous ‘Waters of the US’ Rule.Cuts more Federal Debt for a longer period than any other President. When President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, the amount of US Federal Debt owed both externally and internally was over $19 Trillion at $19,947,304,555,212. As of August 17th, the amount of US Debt had decreased by more than $100 Billion to $19,845,188,460,167.Privatize Air Traffic Control for desperately needed investment.Vote Fraud investigation.Gas prices 12 year low.Ben Carson Finds 500 Billion In Errors during Audit of Obama HUD. (Obama era fraud?)$200m in Apprentice funding.Reversal of Clean Power Rule, to allow safe power.Bill to prioritize training for veterans & police seeking jobs.Anti-Terrorism pact with Qutar.Thousands of jobs created &/or protected in pact with Saudi Arabia on trade.Poland increased arms & US presence v Russia.DOJ sued California for interference with illegal immigration enforcement.DOJ more than 1000 arrests in sex trafficking.DOJ charging 4 for leaks.DOJ took down Alphabay, the largest Dark Web market.DOJ new civil forfeiture rules.DOJ charges 400 in largest Medical Healthcare Fraud.DOJ support of Texas voter ID law.DOJ charged sex traffickers who took hundreds from Thailand to US.DOJ harsher sentences for drug dealers etc.DOJ, Attorney General Sessions designated MS-13 as a priority for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, to allow Federal law enforcement to utilize an expanded toolkit in its efforts to dismantle the organization.The United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras joined together to charge more than 4,000 MS-13 and 18th Street gang members in the United States and Central America, including the alleged leader of MS-13’s “East Coast Program.”August 2018 - More than 20 individuals associated with MS-13 were arrested in California on Federal and State charges in connection with their gang activitiesThe Department of Justice convicted eight members of an international criminal organization, known as the Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization, on Federal charges arising from their scheme to force young women and girls from Mexico and Latin America into prostitution.Signed Rep. Rutherford's STOP School Violence Act and Sens. Cornyn-Murphy "Fix NICS Act."$2 billion for school safety.The Ideological Balance Of The U.S. Sixth And Seventh Circuit Courts Of Appeals Shifted From Liberal To Conservative, Thanks To Judicial Nominees Selected By President Donald Trump.The Department of Justice announced more than $98 million in grant funding through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services COPS Hiring Program to allow 802 additional full-time law enforcement officers.President Trump signed Executive Order 13809 to restore State and local law enforcement’s access to surplus equipment from the Defense Department, such as armored vehicles.In June 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of the new National Public Safety Partnership, a cooperative initiative with cities to reduce violent crimes.Attorney General Sessions expanded Project Safe Neighborhoods to encourage U.S. Attorney’s to work with communities to develop customized crime reduction strategiesAttorney General Sessions returned to longstanding Department of Justice charging policy for our Federal prosecutors, trusting them once again and directing them to return to charging the most serious, readily provable offense.Attorney General Sessions returned to longstanding Department of Justice charging policy for our Federal prosecutors, trusting them once again and directing them to return to charging the most serious, readily provable offense.( Criminals charged with unlawful possession of a firearm had increased 23 percent).Under President Trump, the Department of Justice has supported students whose free-speech rights have been under attack on university campuses. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is reviewing a complaint by a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American associations that alleges racial discrimination against Asian-Americans in Harvard University’s admissions policies and practices.The Department of Justice secured a guilty plea for the first case prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving a victim targeted because of gender identity.According to NERA Economic Consulting, the Obama CPP struck down by Trump would have increased electricity rates by as much as 14 percent, costing American households up to $79 billion.The Administration estimates that repealing the Clean Power Plan could eliminate up to $33 billion in compliance costs in 2030.Trump took Obama shackles of ICE. Deportations up 40%, crossings reduce.Success with his Ad Valorem tariffs.China opens rice market for US exports for the first time ever.MSM proven fake regards Trump's tariffs.Ordering review of unfair contracts & their abuses/abusers - WTOWages highest in 2018 since 2009>$350 B Saudi Arms deal protecting jobs in Miltary/Arms Industries.To combat Russia -E.U. The energy supply of gas; First Natural Gas Shipped to Poland.Coal export up 60% from an industry destroyed by Obama.A probe of China intellectual property theft.Argentina agrees to allow first US pork imports in 25 years.Crude oil shipment from Texas opens new vistas in IndiaUS ties; India’s first ever U.S. crude purchase to arrive in Sept 18. With this, India, the world’s third largest oil importer, joins Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, and China to buy American crude after production cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) drove up prices of Middle East heavy-sour crude, or grades with a high sulfur contentBlocked China from buying Semi-Conductor Company - Lattice.Trump Blocks Chinese Purchase of Chipmaker Due to National Security; President Trump has issued an executive order blocking Singapore-based Broadcom’s $117 billion takeover of U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm on national security grounds. The heated battle for ownership of Qualcomm has ended with a presidential decree barring Broadcom from ever owning the company after CFIUS cited national security concerns with the prospect of such a deal. $QCOM. $AVGO(— David Faber (@davidfaber) March 12, 2018).Additionally, Reuters reports that the Trump order says all 15 candidate directors proposed by Broadcom are disqualified for Qualcomm board. Trump’s decision confirms what Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass explained last week.193. VA Accountability & Protection Law allows sackings of civil servants etc.194. Trump signed Forever GI Bill boosting aid to student vets.195. Tougher border controls bring about for crossing The Border Illegally Is Harder Than Its Been In 50 Years.196. MAGA.197. The Administration actually eliminated 22 regulations for every new regulatory action.198. The Administration issued 67 deregulatory actions while only imposing three new regulatory actions.199. In FY 2017, the Administration saved $8.1 billion in lifetime net regulatory cost savings, equivalent to $570 million per year.200. Throughout 2017, President Trump has made good on his promise to cut red tape, and in doing so has reenergized the United States’ agricultural, energy, and infrastructure sectors by freeing them from oppressive and stifling regulations.201. President Trump has signed 15 Congressional Review Act resolutions into law, more than any other president, ending burdensome Obama-era rules and regulations.202. According to a study by NERA Economic Consulting, implementing the Obama Administration’s plan under the Paris Climate Agreement could have cost the United States economy nearly $3 trillion and 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by 2040.203. President Trump signed 15 Congressional Review Act resolutions into law that is estimated to save American taxpayers $3.7 billion.204. President Trump signed an Executive Order that reduced the time it took to approve infrastructure projects from 10 years to two years.205. To date, 860 regulatory actions have been withdrawn or removed from active status.206. The WSJ said President Trump is "rolling back more regulations than any President in history.207. President Trump has signed a record-breaking 15 CRA bills to roll back regulations.208. Since the CRA became law in 1996, only one had ever been signed (George W. Bush in 2001)209. Along with Executive Orders, these bills will reduce regulatory costs by $18 billion annually.210. The Department of Agriculture issued guidance that would give more flexibility to state operations of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The new program maximized flexibility and holds states more accountable for the delivery of food benefits.212. President Trump created the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity that Secretary Sonny Perdue chairs and developed suggestions. Suggestions include focusing on broadband access, improving the lives of rural Americans, developing methods to support a rural workforce, harness technological innovation for rural communities, and focusing on economic development in rural areas.213. August 2018 - USDA Announced An Investment Of More Than $124 Million To Help Rebuild And Improve Rural Water Infrastructure In 23 States214. September 2018 - The USDA Announced That They Formalized An Agreement With A Nonprofit Organization To Purchase Homes From The USDA And Convert Them Into Transitional Housing For People Recovering From Opioid Misuse. These houses will allow houses in Kentucky's Hart and Rockcastle counties to be converted into transitional housing for individuals and families215. The Department of the Interior proposed its largest oil and gas lease of over 76 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico.216. President Trump and his Administration acted aggressively to increase exports of energy resources to the global market. The Department of Energy announced the approval of the Lake Charles Liquefied Natural Gas terminal.217. The Administration announced the approval of the New Burgos Pipeline, a cross-border project that will export U.S. gasoline to Mexico.218. EPA Administrator Pruitt launched a task force to provide recommendations on how to streamline and improve the Superfund program, which is responsible for cleaning up land contaminated by hazardous waste.The Superfund task force released 42 detailed recommendations with the following goals in mind:Expediting cleanup and remediationRe-invigorating responsible party cleanup and reuseEncouraging private investmentPromoting redevelopment and community revitalizationEngaging partners and stakeholders219. EPA has re-launched launched the Smart Sectors Program to partner with the private sector to achieve better environmental outcomes. The lead for each sector serves as the ombudsmen within the respective agency across program offices, conducts educational site tours, analyzes data and advises options for environmental improvement, and develops reports that profile the impact of each sector.220. To ensure the Government serves the needs of all Americans, President Trump has called for a comprehensive plan to reorganize the executive branch and has begun to implement this plan.221. President Trump has commenced a comprehensive overhaul of digitally delivered Government services.222. President Trump has called for “conducting a full audit of the Pentagon.” The Department of Defense (DOD) responded to the President’s call to action and has begun its first full financial statement audit.223. $1.6 billion for border wall spending. This is the first time the wall has been funded since 2003.224. $703 million increase in ICE funding, from $6.4 billion to $7.1 billion, an increase of more than 10%.225. $21 billion down payment on the President's promise to rebuild infrastructure.226. The President’s infrastructure plan will establish a Rural Infrastructure Program to invest in rebuilding and modernizing rural infrastructure. The Rural Infrastructure Program will seek to:Use outcomes-driven planning efforts and capital improvements to rebuild and modernize rural infrastructure.Grow business revenues and personal incomes in rural areas by expanding access to markets, customers, and employment opportunities.Enhance regional connectivity for rural communities through interregional and interstate projects developed by the public and private sectors.Spur economic growth and competitiveness by closing infrastructure gaps to attract more development and manufacturing investments in rural America.227. President Trump and his Administration allocated $50 billion to empower rural America to address the infrastructure needs of their communities. The $50 billion dedicated to rural America represented 25 percent of all Federal funds in the President’s plan.80 percent of the Rural Infrastructure Program funds will go directly to the governor of each State as determined by a formula.20 percent of the Rural Infrastructure Program funds will be provided to selected States that apply for Rural Performance Grants.NOTES:- States will be provided funding without burdensome bureaucratic commands on how they should spend it.The federal funding provided by the President’s plan will not be awarded in pre-packaged, asset-specific amounts, as is often the case with Federal programs.Funds provided under the President’s proposal will go directly to the governor’s office of the State receiving funds.This will allow Governors to make investments based on the individual infrastructure needs of their rural communities.228. President Trump’s infrastructure plan will enable the rebuilding and modernization of rural infrastructure across a broad range of asset classes.229. The array of broad asset classes eligible for funding under President Trump’s plan will include:Transportation projects will rebuild roads, bridges, railways, and other vital infrastructure.Broadband deployment projects which will improve access for rural communities.Water and waste projects to help ensure rural families have access to clean water.Power and electric projects to provide rural areas with reliable, affordable power.Water resources project to better manage flood risk and improve rural water supplies and waterways.230. In July 2018, Department of Transportation introduced a new pilot program that will boost military recruitment and help with the nationwide shortage of commercial vehicle drivers by allowing 18 – 20-year-olds who possess a U.S. Military equivalent of a commercial driver’s license (CDL) to operate large trucks in interstate commerce.231. President Trump has made clear that broadband should be an infrastructure priority.The President’s plan will provide States with the flexibility to invest in the needs of their rural communities, including broadband.The Rural Infrastructure Program allowed governors to spend 100 percent of Federal funds they received on broadband access.President Trump signed an Executive Order in January on “Streamlining and Expediting Requests to Locate Broadband Facilities in Rural America.”This was built upon the efforts of the Rural Infrastructure Program by the Trump Administration.232. In April 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laid out a comprehensive five-point strategy to combat the opioid abuse crisis.233. The Department of Justice announced that fentanyl substances are a drug class under the Controlled Substances Act. This meant anyone who possesses, imports, distributes or manufactures illicit fentanyl-related substances would be subject to criminal prosecution similar to other controlled substances.Anyone who possesses, imports, distributes or manufactures any illicit fentanyl-related substance will be subject to criminal prosecution similar to other controlled substances.The DOJ announced its first-ever indictments against two Chinese nationals and their North American-based associates for distributing large quantities of fentanyl and other opiate substances. On National Drug Take Back Day, the Drug Enforcement Administration collected a record-breaking 912,305 pounds – 456 tons – of potentially dangerous expired, unused, or unwanted prescription drugs at more than 5,300 collection sites.234. In his first week in office, President Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy that prevented $9 billion in foreign aid from being used to fund the abortion industry.235. President Trump de-funded a U.N. agency for colluding with China’s brutal program of forced abortion and sterilization.236. President Trump worked with the Congress to sign a bill overturning an Obama midnight regulation that prohibited States from defunding abortion service providers.The Trump Administration published guidance which promises to enforce the Obamacare requirement that taxpayer dollars should not support abortion coverage in exchange plans.237. Reinstated the Mexico City Policy to ban any U.S. foreign aid to organizations that perform abortions.238. Signed a Congressional Review Act bill to allow states to restrict Planned Parenthood Funding.239. In President Trump’s FY 2018 budget request, school choice was a priority for increased funding, including supporting $1 billion in Furthering Options of Children to Unlock Success grants for public school choice and $250 million to promote private school choice through the Education Innovation and Research Program.240. Implemented the year-round distribution of Pell grants, instead of limiting these grants to the Spring and Fall semesters.Low-income students will now have access to these funds over Summer and Winter breaks so they can earn their degrees faster with fewer loans.241. The Department of Education reformed the student loan servicing process to improve customer experience and lower costs.242. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is being reformed to be more accessible to students.243. Experts from the financial services industry were brought into the Department of Education to modernize the way FSA offers and services student loans.244. The Department of Education is working to ensure regulations on the books adequately protect students while giving States, institutions, teachers, parents, and students the flexibility they need to improve outcomes.245. The Dept. of Education has identified and withdrawn nearly 600 regulations that are deemed unnecessary.246. Rescinded the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter and 2014 Q&A regarding Title IX enforcement, and interim guidance was issued.247. Paused the Obama Administration’s Borrower Defense to Repayment and Gainful Employment regulations.248. The Department of Education’s Regulatory Review Taskforce identified nearly 600 outdated guidance documents for rescinding.249. August 2018 - The Department of Education announced $359.8 million in Federal assistance to 20 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands to assist with the cost of educating students displaced by Hurricane Harvey, Irma, Maria, or the 2017 California wildfires.250. August 2018 - The Department of Education announced that it would potentially rescind the Gainful Employment Regulation.​​​​​​​The Department Of Education Claimed That The Removal Of This Regulation Would Help Provide Transparency And Fairness To Students In Higher Education.I am sure I have missed numerous ones and so I have included an URL from the Washington Examiner below too. I have not checked it against my own list, I only have 250 accomplishments vs their 289, but what’s 39 between friends, after all 39 exceeds Obama’s accomplishments by, coincidentally 39!!251. POTUS did not leave Vietnam empty-handed. He secured a $15 billion deal. Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways and VietJet Aviation JSC signed deals to buy 110 aircraft from Boeing Co. during President Donald Trump’s visit to Hanoi for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.I am sure I have missed numerous ones and so I have included an URL from the Washington Examiner below too. I have not checked it against my own list, I only have 250 accomplishments vs their 289, but what’s 39 between friends, after all 39 exceeds Obama’s accomplishments by, coincidentally 39!!252. The U.S. economy added 20,000 jobs in February 2019 while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 3.8 percent, making February the 101st month of consecutive U.S. job growth.253. April 2019. Going nuclear on Trump government picks. Republicans set to stop the Democrat obstruction of employee picks that has seen:1. The least number ever confirmed for a President - period.2. Although Trump policy is to not overstaff, Democrat obstruction of any & all picks has seriously damaged government efficiency.This is to end; but why did the Republicans wait?......could it be to ensure the Democrats who deny obstruction, are proven liars yet again, and that the historical record will record it!254. Removal of the falsely claimed right to Pain-Free execution for Death Row killers. SCOTUS 5-4, April 2019.255. June 19, 2019 5.8 million removed from food stamps that were robbing the deserving.Over 5.8 million individuals have discontinued their participation in America’s food stamp program since President Donald Trump’s first full month in office, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. The most recent USDA data shows that 5,829,890 people discontinued their participation in food stamps received through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) since February 2017, Trump’s first full month in office.256. Increased value of Stock Market by US$6 Trillion.257. Ensured NATO pays its fair share.256. “I’m a Jew,” the Miller, White House senior policy adviser said.“As a Jew, as an American Jew, I am profoundly outraged by the remarks by Ocasio-Cortez. It is a historical smear. It is a sinful comment. It minimizes the death of six million of my Jewish brothers and sisters. It minimizes their suffering. And it paints every patriotic law enforcement officer as a war criminal,” he said emphatically.257. The Trade agreement with Canada & Mexico.258. The Killing of terrorist Soleimani.259. The killingn of top ranking Al Qeda terrorist.260. China trade agreement.261. Military funds to build the wall.262. Proving like Russia Gate that Ukraine Gate was another Democrat Sham case. Best though was Jim Jordan destroying the need for witnesses in the senate. The biased 17-0 Democrat witnesses whose evidence was hearsay, extraneous, 2 nd 3rd, & 4 th party, inadmissible nonsense, were officially asked in the House to name a crime, illegal or unlawful act committed by Trump – NON COULD!!