HUFFPOST HILL – 2017 Already Shaping Up To Be The New 2016

Daily Mail Like what you read below? Sign up for HUFFPOST HILL and get a cheeky dose of political news every evening! The Patriots came back from a major deficit to win Super Bowl LI, a win that will be autopsied at length by the Falcons at a David Brock-hosted retreat. John Yoo took a break from exsanguinating puppies and using their blood to write “Dexter” fan fiction to say the Trump administration has gone too far. And President Trump delivered a highly politicized address to service members, attacking the press and praising the troops’ support for him in November. This reminds us, mark your calendars for our July, 2025 inmate production of “Oklahoma!” at the Eric Trump Center for Re-Education and Tying Pastel Sweaters Around Your Shoulders. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, February 6th, 2017: OH DEAR – Once the president starts offering veterans choice farmland north of the Po River, then it’s really light’s out for our civilian-controlled military. Rebecca Kheel: “President Trump on Monday kicked off his first speech to U.S. service members by touting his election win and highlighting the support he had from troops. ‘We had a wonderful election didn’t we? And I saw those numbers, and you like me and I like you,’ Trump said at the start of his speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Trump was popular among service members during the election, with active-duty military and veterans voting for Trump by a larger margin than for his rival, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.” [The Hill] WHEW, THANK GOODNESS OBAMA AND HIS EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE GONE – Also, thank goodness we are finally letting Congress do its job and change the rul―- oh. Jonathan Cohn: “[T]he Trump administration is considering using its executive authority to tweak some of [ACA’s] rules for insurers. Many of the changes under discussion track closely to recommendations from the insurance industry…. Insurers would have more leeway to vary prices by age, so that premiums for the oldest customers could be 3.49 times as large as those for younger customers…. People who want to apply for coverage mid-year, outside of open enrollment, would have to provide documentation of a qualifying life change ― such as a divorce or lost job ― before coverage begins…. Insurers could cut off coverage for people who are more than 30 days late on premiums. Presently, lower- and middle-income consumers who qualify for the law’s tax credits get a 90-day grace period.” [HuffPost] ICYMI: “President Donald Trump seemed to suggest on Sunday that the Republicans’ replacement for the Affordable Care Act might not materialize until 2018.” [HuffPost] TEAM TRUMP GUNNING FOR CFPB – Great news for people who don’t mind it when their airbags expel nothing but confetti. Lorraine Woellert and Josh Dawsey: “Allies of President Donald Trump are building a legal case for ousting Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau who one court called ‘the single most powerful official’ in government after the president. Cordray […]

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Kellyanne Conway’s Credibility Questioned After ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ Flub

Carlos Barria/Reuters NEW YORK ― Television news executives are beginning to think twice about booking White House counselor Kellyanne Conway for segments over concerns her credibility has been too damaged. Not all bookers are pulling the plug on putting the close Trump aide on their shows. Her proximity to the president remains a draw despite the dubiousness of some of her claims. But recent statements in which Conway invented a terrorist attack that she blamed the media for not covering, along with citing “alternative facts” when pressed on baseless White House claims, has forced some to reassess her utility on air. As The Huffington Post reported Friday, the White House did not offer Vice President Mike Pence as a guest on CNN’s “State of the Union” even though he was appearing on the four other major Sunday shows. The snub followed a Politico report that the White House was “freezing out” CNN, which Trump increasingly attacks for being “fake news.” A CNN spokeswoman said the White House offered Conway as a substitute, but the network declined. On Sunday night, New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg wrote that CNN didn’t only turn down Conway because of the Pence factor, but also due to “serious questions about her credibility” inside the network. CNN sources insisted to HuffPost on Monday that the White House’s refusal to offer Pence was the reason for rejecting Conway as a guest on “State of the Union.” But more broadly, sources said there has been a reluctance to book Conway because of credibility issues. The network declined to comment. Conway has been mocked over the past week after citing the “Bowling Green massacre,” a nonexistent terrorist attack, as justification for President Donald Trump’s executive order barring entry to citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries. “Most people don’t know [about the massacre] because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said Thursday on MSNBC. It actually didn’t happen. Though two Iraqi nationals living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, were arrested in 2011 for plotting to send money and weapons to al-Qaida operatives in Iraq, there was no attack. Conway said Friday on Twitter that she made an “honest mistake” and said Sunday on Fox News that she “misspoke one word.” However, Cosmopolitan revealed Monday that Conway had also referred to the “Bowling Green massacre” in an earlier interview with the magazine, and the White House counselor cited the “Bowling Green attack” in an interview with TMZ. Conway also recently defended the White House’s bogus claims about Trump’s inauguration crowd size by suggesting they had “alterative facts,” an Orwellian term that similarly inspired mockery and raised serious concerns that the Trump administration was attempting to create its own reality to justify its actions. One of Trump’s most dogged television surrogates during the campaign, Conway has remained a familiar face in TV news studios since he won the presidency. The Washington Post recently reported that Trump “respects her on-camera ability to dodge, defuse and deflect whatever comes her way.” But critics have questioned networks continuing […]

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Myanmar Security Forces Allegedly Raped And Abused Rohingya Women And Girls

Myanmar’s police and army forces carried out a campaign of rape and sexual abuse against ethnic Rohingya Muslim women and girls in late 2016, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Monday. The rights organization claims that during a military operation starting last October, security forces in at least nine villages committed rape, gang rape and other sex crimes. Some of the survivors were as young as 13, witnesses told HRW. The Human Rights Watch report builds on an already substantial body of evidence documenting the Myanmar government’s wide range of abuses against the country’s Rohingya minority. The latest surge of violence against the group, according to HRW, included arson involving at least 1,500 buildings in Rohingya villages, army helicopters firing on civilians, and dozens of rapes and sexual assaults. “These horrific attacks on Rohingya women and girls by security forces add a new and brutal chapter to the Burmese military’s long and sickening history of sexual violence against women,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, HRW’s senior emergencies researcher, in Monday’s report. (Myanmar is also known as Burma.) Human Rights Watch’s report cites other recent investigations into security service’s actions in the country’s Rakhine state, where many of Myanmar’s more than 1 million Rohingya live. A Rohingya family fleeing from Dekibonia village in Myanmar crosses into Bangladesh on Feb. 6. On Friday, a 50-page United Nations human rights report ― based on interviews with hundreds of people in affected areas ― detailed allegations of gang rape and the killing of children, as well as numerous other abuses. One witness told the U.N. that security services slit the throat of her 5-year-old daughter, who was attempting to protect her from being raped. Another survivor told the U.N. that forces killed her baby during an attack. “They beat and killed my husband with a knife. They went into my house. Five of them took off my clothes and raped me. My 8-month-old son was crying of hunger when they were in my house because he wanted to breastfeed, so to silence him they killed him too with a knife,” the unnamed 25-year-old woman said in the report. In October, eight women from one village in Rakhine state also told Reuters that soldiers raped them at gunpoint after raiding their homes. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said Friday that he had talked with Myanmar’s leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, about the report. Aung San Suu Kyi vowed to investigate the allegations, Zeid said. Presidential spokesman U Zaw Htay issued a statement the same day announcing that an investigative commission led by Vice President U Myint Swe would look into the report’s findings. Myanmar’s authorities have previously denied abuses against the Rohingya, saying that military operations in Rakhine are targeting Islamist insurgents. Many in Myanmar’s majority Buddhist population also don’t acknowledge the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group. The army blocks media access to Rakhine state, creating difficulties for journalists attempting to get information from Rohingya […]

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Restaurant Shows Customers What’s Wrong With Donald Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Orders

As President Donald Trump works to exclude refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries from the United States, one New York City eatery is reminding its customers that immigrants are part of what makes America great. Kiwiana, a Brooklyn restaurant that serves fare from New Zealand, recently started including a note on its receipts that reads: “Immigrants make America great (they also cooked your food and served you today).” The message went viral after NBC News contributor Mary Emily O’Hara tweeted a photo of her receipt from a meal at the restaurant on Sunday. The note doesn’t explicitly mention the president, but Kiwiana head chef Mark Simmons decided to add it to receipts “when the outrageous executive orders started to rain down from Mr. Trump,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. Trump signed an executive order last month calling for stricter border security and a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, which he has repeatedly insisted Mexico will pay for. (Mexico’s president has continually objected to the proposed wall and said his country will not pay for it, despite Trump’s promises.) Another order Trump issued last month temporarily suspends the refugee resettlement program, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and bars nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The order fueled protests around the country as well as challenges in court. A federal judge put the travel ban on hold nationwide with a temporary restraining order on Friday. “I see this as a peaceful protest,” Simmons explained in his email. The response to his restaurant’s message has mostly been positive, he said, though one woman did call to criticize him for “reverse racism.” Mark Simmons, a former “Top Chef” contestant, is taking a stand against Donald Trump’s executive orders. Trump spent his time on the campaign trail stoking his supporters’ fears about immigrants and refugees. He jumped into the race with a speech referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and he made the border wall a central part of his platform. “Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders,” Trump said on Jan. 25, when he signed the order to build the wall. “I just signed two executive orders that will save thousands of lives, millions of jobs and billions and billions of dollars.” Immigrants and children of immigrants make up the majority of Kiwiana’s staff and come from at least six different countries. Simmons, who grew up on a sheep farm in New Zealand, is an immigrant himself. He strongly rejected Trump’s negative depictions of immigrants in his email: I offer a service to the community and I pay taxes. I am hard working and love living in Brooklyn and providing a service to the community that is close to my heart. Immigrants are hard working, happy to be here and are honest and loyal people. There are no bad hombres at Kiwiana restaurant. Immigrants are the backbone of the hospitality industry. Without immigrants the industry would be crippled. Simmons was a […]

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Sean Spicer Accuses Immigration Order Protesters Of Being Paid

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday dismissed protests against the administration’s travel ban as being nothing more than “paid” demonstrations. During an interview with Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” host Brian Kilmeade asked Spicer whether people were being paid to protest the order, which banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries into the U.S. “Oh, absolutely,” Spicer said. “I mean, protesting has become a profession now.” He added: “They have every right to do that, don’t get me wrong, but I think that we need to call it what it is. It’s not these organic uprisings that we’ve seen through the last several decades. The tea party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.” Americans took to the streets for a second weekend on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s order, which has been temporarily suspended by a federal judge and is being reviewed by an appellate court. Anti-Trump gatherings were reported in Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and outside the president’s resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he spent the weekend. Last week, thousands of people descended on the White House on Sunday afternoon for a rally followed by a march down Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands more marched in cities and outside airports across the nation in protest of the order, which had caused families and refugees to be detained or otherwise prevented from entering the country. Hundreds of volunteer lawyers descended on airports to provide free legal services to those in need. If someone had been able to organize a sustained nationwide protest that involved hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of cities and airports across the country, as Spicer claimed, that would certainly qualify as an extraordinary feat. Trump took a similar stance against the protesters last week. “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president tweeted, after a protest at the University of California at Berkeley turned violent. A Republican member of Congress even found a way to use the same line. Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) last week complained about the heat he was receiving back home in his district over his desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “There’s paid protesters … paid activists on the far left, not my Democratic friends I go to church with. They’re being paid to go around and raise havoc,” Brat said after the town hall. But there is danger in dismissing the significance of such protests (and bad poll numbers, as Trump did Monday) outright. In 2009, for example, Barack Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs took a stance similar to Spicer’s, referring to tea party-organized disruptions at Democratic congressional town halls as “Astroturf” and “manufactured anger.” We all know how that turned out. How will Trump’s first 100 days impact you? Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get breaking updates on Trump’s presidency by messaging us here.

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‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Rockets To Top Of Amazon Best-Seller List

Another day, another politically charged book claiming the top spot on Amazon’s hourly updated best-seller list. In the horse race of literary sales, classic speculative dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, by renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood, is currently nosing ahead. With a little help from spine-tingling Super Bowl teasers for the upcoming Hulu series adaptation of the book, Atwood’s foreboding tale of a society that regresses into religiously driven totalitarianism took the top spot from Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ Dangerous. Margaret Atwood’s modern classic has nudged Milo Yiannopoulos’s Dangerous out of No. 1 on Amazon. The Handmaid’s Tale, which was originally published in 1985, envisions a region, currently known as the United States, governed by an oppressive theocratic oligarchy called The Republic of Gilead. When the regime took power, women in a then-egalitarian society quickly lost the right to hold jobs, own property or money, or choose their destinies. Instead, the women are shunted into roles subservient to male needs. The heroine, Offred, becomes a handmaiden, whose calling it is to conceive and bear children for a high-level government official whose wife is infertile. In April, a series adaptation of the book starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred will premiere on Hulu. The show has stirred up ample anticipation, boasting a stellar cast, a striking premise, and beloved source material. Handmaid’s Tale, with its chilling, artful depiction of women’s rights ripped away by a fundamentalist regime, often appears on feminist reading lists and English class syllabuses alike. On Sunday, the annual Super Bowl ad bonanza featured a new trailer for the show, which played up themes of oppression and resistance. “We only wanted to make the world better,” Offred’s master (Joseph Fiennes) tells her in one scene. “Better never means better for everyone.” In a voiceover concluding the teaser, Offred declares, “I intend to survive.” (Watch the full trailer above.) As the series won’t be out for some time, it’s no wonder intrigued viewers might be turning to the book upon which its based first, or gearing up for the streaming event by rereading the novel. And it seems they did, in droves. As of Monday morning, the book wasn’t just in the top spot on Amazon ― the paperback edition was in restocking limbo: The paperback edition of The Handmaid’s Tale will be in stock on Amazon on Wednesday. Then again, maybe it’s not just excitement over the TV show. According to Amazon’s Frequently Bought Together widget, customers who picked up a copy of Handmaid’s Tale most often bought two other classic novels enjoying a surge in popularity during this political moment: George Orwell’s 1984 and Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. Books of a feather?

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I’m A Liberal, And I Want Milo Yiannopoulos On My Campus

Image Via Facebook Just last week, Breitbart News editor and public speaker Milo Yiannopoulos saw one of his speaking engagements canceled when a protest against him at UC Berkeley turned into a violent riot. Rioters broke windows and even took part in brutal beatings of Milo’s supporters. I am not on the same side politically as Milo. I am a liberal because I believe in liberty. First and foremost, my most cherished liberty is freedom of speech. The entire idea of freedom of speech is predicated on the notion that one must protect not only speech which they agree with, but also speech they disagree with. That also extends to speech which *gasp* offends you. The violent rioters at UC Berkeley are representative of a phenomenon I and other actual liberals call the “regressive left.” The regressive left doesn’t truly stand for liberty. Instead, they stand for the idea that anyone that says anything which offends them or doesn’t fit their narrative can and should be silenced. This regressive mindset is not only wrong, it is incredibly dangerous. A healthy public debate of ideas never silences anyone who wishes to engage in an open and honest dialogue about important issues. Unlike many of his critic and the bulk of these rioters, I have actually listened to Milo speak. When Milo is faced with a tantrum from a protester who disrupts his events, he mercilessly mocks them to no end. However, and this is crucial to my view of Yiannopoulos, when faced with a respectful challenge to his ideas, he’s extremely polite and gives very well thought out answers to genuine questions from liberals. This is what public discourse between people who disagree is supposed to look like. It’s not supposed to look like the absolute temper tantrum that many regressive leftists throw at his events. And when they’re not throwing tantrums, these regressives resort to the next most destructive thing, name-calling. You’ve all heard it over the course of the past year. Conservatives are racist, sexist, islamophobic etc. Despite my progressive views and liberal credentials as a youth leader in the Democratic Party, I’ve been called all of these things when I speak freely about political issues. The one thing I have not been called is the utterly hyperbolic “neo-Nazi.” Milo has been called a neo-Nazi by many of his most fervent critics. He is also a half Jewish, openly gay man. I will refer to my ethnic heritage when I say that calling Milo a Nazi is incredibly insulting to the memory of my ancestors and the millions of others who suffered during the holocaust. Milo is not an oppressor, he’s a messenger. I don’t agree with every aspect of his message. However, I must admit, I agree with some of it. And that’s important. It’s important for people from different sides of the isle to listen to one another. That’s how you find common ground and come to a consensus. It’s how you change minds and strengthen your […]

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