riversedge
riversedge's JournalSeeking to shrink Bears Ears, uranium firm met with Interior before review
Source: roll call
House panel plans oversight hearing on monuments next week
Posted Mar 4, 2019 3:08 PM
Jacob Holzman
A meeting between an Interior Department official and a company tied to mineral interests in the Bears Ears National Monument area — almost a month before President Donald Trump requested a review that substantially reduced its boundaries — may end up in the crosshairs of House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva.
Documents show that Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian energy firm, met with a top Interior official who would be involved with the review before Trump requested it.
When President Barack Obama designated the monument in December 2016, its boundaries encompassed or abutted over 350 uranium claims tied to the company. Its uranium processing mill, the only such facility in the United States, was located mere miles from the monument. Proximity to a national monument can lead to additional regulatory scrutiny.
In December 2017, Trump, following recommendations by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that were developed during the review, significantly reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
Trump’s revamped boundaries for Bears Ears also likely removed all of more than 100 uranium claims tied to Energy Fuels. ...............................
Read more: https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/bears-ears-uranium-firm-hearing
Natural Resources
?Verified account @NRDems
7h7 hours ago
The Trump administration destroyed Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The American people deserve to know who was in the room when it happened. We’re holding a March 13 hearing to get answers.
https://twitter.com/NRDems/status/1102685382435590145
Photo from above article:
The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on a review that led to substantially reduced boundaries for Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. A company tied to mineral interests there met with a senior Interior Department official nearly a month before President Donald Trump requested the review. (George Frey/Getty Images file photo)
https://twitter.com/PacificStand/status/1100513842558169088
https://twitter.com/rangergabe/status/1102353917071912961
https://twitter.com/BeesBackyard/status/1102236466078375936
https://twitter.com/bymattkelly/status/1101470072466563072
https://twitter.com/outdoortechtool/status/1102675178725801985
The Theft of Grand Staircase–Escalante
https://www.outsideonline.com/2391192/grand-staircase-escalante-trump
Leath Tonino
Mar 4, 2019
In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it was shrinking the iconic Utah national monument by nearly 50 percent. Leath Tonino devised a sketchy 200-mile solo desert trek, following the path of the legendary cartographer who literally put these contentious canyons on the map.
Deanna Glover’s voice hits a high note along with her eyebrows, tone and expression conveying the same grandmotherly concern.
She’s not my grandmother—we met for the first time an hour ago—but that hardly seems to matter to the sweet, white-haired 80-year-old. “Tell me you’ll have a friend hiking with you, because it’s a lot of country,” she says. “And, you know, I start to worry.”
The Kanab Heritage Museum, in Kane County, Utah, is cluttered with arrowheads, wedding gowns, antique farm implements, and sepia photographs of the families that founded the town of Kanab in 1870. I phoned Deanna, a descendent of these Mormon pioneers, earlier this April morning, and though the museum, her baby and brainchild, was closed, she insisted on opening it so that the displays could inform my upcoming 200-mile, two-week trek through Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument.
Hiking with a friend? I shake my head, and a latent anxiety rears up, the prickly fear-thrill of engaging a desert that demands resourcefulness (drinking water found in sculpted potholes), extreme caution (camouflaged rattlesnakes in the middle of the trail), and a tolerance for solitude (my girlfriend, as I hugged her goodbye before leaving for Utah, told me to enjoy peeking into the recesses of my own skull).
Recounting this quip to Deanna, I notice the grip on her walker tighten. “Oh, I’ll be praying for you then,” she says. “I’m not kidding—it’s a whole lot of country.”
Ocher buttes, umber scarps, maroon hoodoos: whole lot of country indeed. Extending north and east from Kanab, the monument encompasses one of the gnarliest stretches of the lower 48. To borrow writer Charles Bowden’s apt phrase, it’s “the heart of stone.”
Ever since President Clinton established the monument in 1996, it has been contentious: old-timers versus newcomers, Republicans versus Democrats, advocates of using the land versus advocates of protecting it (as if these were mutually exclusive agendas). Conservative politicians in pressed blue jeans and blazers tend to see it as an affront to economic growth. Dirtbag adventurers in Chaco sandals deem it one of the epicenters of North American slot canyoneering. In Kanab, mention Edward Abbey, the Southwest’s iconic nature writer, and you’ll receive either a high five or a tirade, depending on your interlocutor........................................
?itok=wEQ1Suyx
George Conway saysimpeachable offence for Trump to order Cohn to pressure the DOJ
JUST ONE of trumps scandals would be done Pres Obama in!! just one.
George Conway @gtconway3d
15h15 hours ago
“Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, evidently understood that it would be highly improper for a President to use the Justice Department to undermine two of the most powerful companies in the country as punishment for unfavorable news coverage, ....”
George Conway added,
Hadas Gold
Verified account @Hadas_Gold
Jane Mayer reports Trump ordered Gary Cohn to pressure the DOJ to file the lawsuit to block the AT&T/Time Warner lawsuit … https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house …
If proven, such an attempt to use presidential authority to seek retribution for the exercise of First Amendment rights would unquestionably be grounds for impeachment.
George Conway added,
Verified account @Hadas_Gold
Jane Mayer reports Trump ordered Gary Cohn to pressure the DOJ to file the lawsuit to block the AT&T/Time Warner lawsuit … https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house …
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1102544748886310913
AOC: Trump is 'such a small, mediocre person
petty is my favorite word to describe Trump lately
AOC: Trump is 'such a small, mediocre person'
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/4/1839441/-AOC-Trump-is-such-a-small-mediocre-person?utm_campaign=trending
Monday March 04, 2019 · 6:07 PM CST
Hoo-boy.
Cue the McRib sauce spittle and/or barking-mad tweetering.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, the GOP’s bête noire du jour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called out Donald Trump in a big way.
Boom!
Ocasio-Cortez says that she has tried to keep her focus partly by avoiding watching Trump on television: “He relies and thrives on attention, and so the less attention he’s given, even if it’s just one set of eyeballs, the weaker he is.” She said that watching Trump in the House chamber at the State of the Union address made her feel “sick” and “underwhelmed.”
“He is such a small, mediocre person,” she told me. “I grew up with a real romanticism about America. I grew up in a first-generation household where your parents give up everything, and for me America was the greatest thing ever to exist. To be there on the floor of the House was beyond anything my parents would have ever dreamed of. But the person behind the podium was so unskilled. It was kind of sad.”
That's not gonna sit well with the big, bad haircut.............
Trump boldly asserts that he has learned nothing these past two years
The ugly part was watching his fans cheer him on.
Trump boldly asserts that he has learned nothing these past two years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-boldly-asserts-that-he-has-learned-nothing-these-past-two-years/2019/03/04/e85aa238-3eb8-11e9-922c-64d6b7840b82_story.html?utm_term=.392d3b01a254
March 4 at 5:38 PM
“A great empire and little minds go ill together,” said Edmund Burke.
The United States is not quite an empire, but one little mind was on full display during President Trump’s speech this past weekend to the Conservative Political Action Conference. It was two hours of Trump unplugged, unleashed, uncensored, unreconstructed and unhinged. It was a vivid reminder that the president of the United States, when he is most comfortable and authentic, is a rude, arrogant crank yelling profanities at the television. Correction: through the television.
Most Americans, I suspect, would judge the speech as bad and rambling. To a former speechwriter, it was like watching a wound drain; it was like eating toothpaste canapés, it was like holding centipedes on your tongue; it was like hearing a ringtone of “Macarena” during a funeral, and no one can find the phone.
As the organizing structure of the speech, Trump skipped from enemy to enemy — a taunt here, a mock there. Hillary Clinton made an appearance. As did Robert S. Mueller III and Jeff Sessions, and Central American refugees, and weak-kneed generals, and socialist Democrats, and university administrators, and those horrible people who miscount inaugural crowds.
This last point — that the size of his inaugural crowd was maliciously underestimated by evil forces — seems to be the Ur-myth of Trumpism. It was the subject of his first order as president compelling a minion (poor Sean Spicer) to utter an absurd falsehood on his behalf. Given the flood of lies that has followed, it must have felt darn good. Those who are willing to believe this original lie are the truest of believers — a core of supporters who will stomach absolutely anything.
Trump’s CPAC speech was a bold assertion that he has learned nothing — absolutely nothing — during his first two years in office. Not manners. Not economics. Not geopolitics. Not simple decency.
The speech seemed like the rhetorical spawn of Fidel Castro and George Wallace, combining demagoguery with bigotry in equal measure. And it confirmed Trump’s place as the worst speaker in presidential history............................
:large
President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor on Saturday. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
By Michael Gerson
Mueller tells judge of new Roger Stone post on Instagram
Source: Politico
03/04/2019 06:02 PM EST
Roger Stone is under fire for possible violations of his court-imposed gag order after a weekend social media post suggested he’d been “framed” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and ahead of the imminent re-release of a book he co-wrote that explores the “myth of Russian collusion.”
The longtime Donald Trump associate remains under a Feb. 21 order from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson that bans him from making public comments of any kind about his upcoming criminal trial on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ Russia probe.
But Stone on several recent occasions has already tested the limits of the gag order — which did allow him to continue speaking about matters unrelated to the Russia investigation, and also to make statements to raise money for his legal defense fund and to explain in simple terms that he had entered a plea of not guilty...................................
...................................
The special counsel’s office took no other position on the post, which was made on the same social media platform as a controversial image that landed Stone in trouble last month because it featured Jackson with what appeared to be a gun’s crosshairs above her head. Stone deleted that image and replaced it with one without the crosshairs. He then later deleted that second Instagram post.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/04/mueller-roger-stone-post-instagram-1202919
oh oh, Roger is in trouble!
In a filing, Robert Mueller’s office pointed to public reporting that Roger Stone on Sunday had posted an image to his Instagram account with the words “who framed Roger Stone.” | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Rep. Nadler: To be clear, this tweet -by @Jim_Jordan counts both as inane AND anti-Semitic.
We are going to hear a lot from Gym Jordan the bigot.
Ilhan Omar’s critics have little to say about Jim Jordan’s anti-Semitic tweet
The double standard is opaque.
https://thinkprogress.org/jim-jordan-anti-semitism-ilhan-omar-0aa2673e7717/
Zack Ford Mar 4, 2019, 11:32 am
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. CREDIT: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Fresh off his fiery display at the Michael Cohen hearing last week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is under fire for tweeting an anti-Semitic trope at a fellow member of Congress who is Jewish.
Responding to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who announced Sunday that the House Judiciary Committee would seek documents from some 60 individuals in Trump’s orbit as part of its investigation, Jordan accused Nadler of agreeing with California billionaire Tom Steyer that President Donald Trump should be impeached. But Jordan spelled Steyer’s name with a dollar sign:
.....................................
Both Nadler and Steyer are Jewish, prompting many to quickly call out the tweet as anti-Semitic.
Nadler himself called out the tweet as such on Monday morning:
@RepJerryNadler
(((Rep. Nadler))) Retweeted Rep. Jim Jordan
To be clear, this tweet counts both as inane AND anti-Semitic.
https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1102568408837771265
https://twitter.com/thinkprogress/status/1102637514022682627
https://twitter.com/ZackFord/status/1102609105955573761
AAP Urges Major Technology Companies to Combat Vaccine Misinformation Online
Please keep this issue in the forefront and pass it along. thanks.
https://twitter.com/AmerAcadPeds/status/1102653713620090883
AAP Urges Major Technology Companies to Combat Vaccine Misinformation Online
https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Vaccine-Misinformation-Tech-Company-Letters.aspx
3/4/2019
As measles spreads in U.S., pediatricians go beyond the clinic walls to reach parents with accurate information to protect children
Washington, DC—Today, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) President Kyle E. Yasuda, MD, FAAP, sent letters to the CEOs of three major technology companies—Google (which owns YouTube), Facebook (which owns Instagram and WhatsApp) and Pinterest—highlighting the growing threat that online vaccine misinformation poses to children’s health.
“Pediatricians are working in our clinics and our communities, talking with families one-on-one about how important vaccines are to protect their children’s health. But it’s no longer enough,” said Dr. Yasuda. “Our worst fears are being realized as measles outbreaks spread across the country. I reached out to the technology industry with an urgent request to work together to combat the dangerous spread of vaccine misinformation online.”
Though robust scientific research demonstrates that vaccines are safe, effective and life-saving, inaccurate and misleading content about vaccines proliferates online. As parents increasingly turn to social media to gather information and form opinions about their children’s health, the consequences of inaccurate information play out offline.
While Facebook, Google and Pinterest have each indicated that they are taking steps to address the unique vulnerabilities in their respective platforms, the Academy urges more be done to ensure that parents are equipped with credible information from verified sources about vaccines.
“Pediatricians talk with families every day about their children’s health, and we respect parents who disagree with us. We have found that continuing to talk with parents who are hesitant about vaccines is the best way to bring them closer to a decision to vaccinate their child. The same is true in the social media space,” writes Dr. Yasuda.
The letters conclude with a request to meet and discuss ways the AAP and the technology companies can work together to ensure that when searching for information on vaccines, the information parents find online is credible, informed by science and from trusted sources.
“We have an opportunity—and in my view, an obligation—to work together to solve this public health crisis,” Dr. Yasuda writes. “It will take commitments across all sectors—local and federal government, the medical and public health community, and the technology industry—to do so.”
###
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit aap.org and follow us on Twitter @AmerAcadPeds.
Seb Gorka Out at Fox News, Berates Mediaite Editor Over Email: 'You Don't Have Any Friends'
Even too much for Fox???? whow
Seb Gorka Out at Fox News, Berates Mediaite Editor Over Email: ‘You Don’t Have Any Friends’
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/seb-gorka-no-longer-a-contributor-at-fox-news/?utm_source=mostpopular
by Aidan McLaughlin | Mar 3rd, 2019, 9:26 pm 4086
Seb Gorka, pundit turned White House staffer turned pundit, is no longer a Fox News contributor, the network confirmed to Mediaite.
Gorka, a self-proclaimed national security expert, worked as a contributor for Fox News before he joined the Trump administration (to apparently wreak havoc on the National Security Council). He returned to Fox News in November 2017 shortly after he was reportedly forced out of the administration by former chief of staff John Kelly.
.....................................
At Fox, Gorka was a regular fixture on opinion programs like Sean Hannity‘s primetime show, though he was not invited on the network’s hard news programs. Gorka now hosts a show on conservative talk radio outlet Salem Radio Network and serves as a contributor to Sinclair TV.
Since departing Fox, Gorka has continued the antics that have made him an obsession of tediously-insider media reporting. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he warned that Democrats are trying to confiscate hamburgers from Americans and complained so vigorously about Mediaite’s Caleb Ecarma that the organization threatened to ban all of our reporters from the conference.
News of Gorka’s split from Fox News was first reported in a MarketWatch story on his comments from CPAC about hamburgers. When reached for comment, a Fox spokesperson confirmed the network and Gorka had parted ways.
"Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one."
March 11, 2019 Issue
The Making of the Fox News White House
Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house
By Jane Mayer
Sean Hannity recently joined Trump at a rally. Greta Van Susteren, a former Fox host, calls the move an “egregious mistake.”
Illustration by Tyler Comrie; photograph from Getty
In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location.
Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had an exclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”
Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.”
Hemmer argues that Fox—which, as the most watched cable news network, generates about $2.7 billion a year for its parent company, 21st Century Fox—acts as a force multiplier for Trump, solidifying his hold over the Republican Party and intensifying his support. “Fox is not just taking the temperature of the base—it’s raising the temperature,” she says. “It’s a radicalization model.” For both Trump and Fox, “fear is a business strategy—it keeps people watching.” As the President has been beset by scandals, congressional hearings, and even talk of impeachment, Fox has been both his shield and his sword. The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead. All day long, Trump retweets claims made on the network; his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”.........................
North Korea Waged Cyber Attacks on US In Midst of Trump/Kim Meeting
Source: hillreporter
March 4, 2019
One would also assume that North Korean would have shied away from state-sponsored cybercrime against the United States during the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam this last week with President Trump. That, however, appears to be a poor assumption.
A new report by the New York Times indicates that hackers linked to North Korea waged cyberattacks on the United States and others on the same day that Trump and Kim met to discuss denuclearization.
While North Korea has shied away from nuclear tests in the 15 months since Trump and Kim began negotiating, hackers within the Lazarus group continued to target multiple major industries in the US, including the telecommunications and energy industries.
The specific operation, according to McAfee, who discovered the covert actions, is called Operation Sharpshooter. The operation began as early as September 2017 and has continued since.
“[The hackers] are very, very, very active. It’s been nonstop,” Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, told the Times................................
Read more: https://hillreporter.com/north-korea-waged-cyber-attacks-on-us-in-midst-of-trump-kim-meeting-26407
https://twitter.com/HillReporter/status/1102540950453268481
https://twitter.com/OMGno2trump/status/1102553045781671937
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