5: While Hardly Anyone Notices, the GOP Is Gutting Regulations to Help Big Business
Congress is rolling back Obama-era rules governing pollution from coal mines, oil-drilling emissions, and more.
For the past couple weeks, the news cycle has fixated on the protests and court battles kicked off by Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders on refugees, immigrants, and travelers to the US from seven Muslim-majority countries. And rightly so, given the impact these actions have had on the communities they’ve targeted. But in background, the 115th US Congress has quietly kicked into gear, passing its first two significant Trump-era measures and sending them to the president on Monday for a signature.
On their face, these House joint resolutions may seem a little niche. One nullifies a late Obama-era Department of the Interior rule that would have cracked down on pollution coming from coal mines. The other nullifies a Securities and Exchange Commission rule, also put into place near the end of Obama’s tenure, which would have forced oil, gas, and mining companies to be more transparent about their deals with foreign governments. These moves, which Trump is likely to sign if he hasn’t done so already, represent the beginning of a potentially major push to cull regulations, giving a freer hand to corporate America in all kinds of ways.
Vice News
4: Violence grips protest rally in Baghdad
At least four protesters and one policeman have been killed in the Iraqi capital during a rally by thousands calling for an overhaul of the electoral system, according to Baghdad’s governor.
Iraqi security forces fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets at thousands of supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shia leader, who were demonstrating on Saturday near Baghdad’s Green Zone to press for electoral changes.
At least 320 protesters and seven police officers were wounded as violence gripped the rally.
The Associated Press news agency, quoting hospital officials, said the officer died of a bullet wound.
Sadr has accused the elections commission of being corrupt and called for the commission’s members to be changed, according to a statement from his office.
Rising to his call to protest, demonstrators had gathered near the Green Zone – a cluster of embassies and government buildings – to demand an overhaul of the commission that supervises elections before a provincial vote due in September.
Aljazeera
3: What do Trump voters think of his performance so far?
Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th US president on January 20, his actions have sparked global protests and concern.
His executive order to halt all refugee entries for 120 days, suspend admission of Syrian refugees indefinitely and block for three months most travellers from the Muslim-majority nations of Libya, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen sparked a legal battle and nationwide demonstrations.
He signed many other executive orders, including reinstating the “Mexico City Policy”, which prohibits federal funding for international non-governmental organisations that provide or talk about abortions.
He signalled his intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and decreed that for every regulation the executive branch proposes, two others must be repealed. He threatened to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary cities that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement.
Aljazeera
2: Britain’s extremist bloggers helping the ‘alt-right’ go global, report finds
A rightwing network of British bloggers and social media activists has emerged as an increasingly influential voice for white nationalists and for those who oppose multiculturalism. The network is also credited with helping propel Donald Trump to the presidency, a new report has claimed.
In its annual audit of the far right, Hope not Hate, the UK’s largest anti-racism and anti-extremism movement, said that although conventional far right groups such as the English Defence League continue to fracture, new forces have surfaced that can reach a vast international audience and bolster support for the “alt-right”, which is defined as the far right with a fringe “white nationalist element” that opposes multiculturalism and defends “western values”.
The Guardian
1: AS TENSIONS RISE, STEVE BANNON AND ISIS GET CLOSER TO THEIR COMMON GOAL: CIVILIZATIONAL WAR
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION has taken sweeping, drastic measures that it says are necessary to protect Americans from the threat of terrorism, including its executive order halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. But the radical policies and beliefs of this administration could just as easily end up fueling the narratives of extremist groups fighting the United States. When Trump ran a campaign built on promises to destroy ISIS, how can one explain the fact that supporters of the group in Mosul were reportedly celebrating his Muslim ban?
The order was based on plainly dubious claims about national security, targeting for scrutiny some of the most heavily vetted visitors to the United States. But the tangible purpose it did serve, before being at least temporarily frozen by the courts, was to divide Americans from millions of people in the Muslim world by sending the latter a message of gratuitous insult and contempt — and emboldening the very extremist movements the order was ostensibly directed against.
That kind of polarization may be exactly what some members of the White House want. High-ranking members of the current administration — most notably its chief strategist, Steve Bannon — have publicly espoused apocalyptic theories of history that center on a forthcoming clash between Western countries and the Muslim world, a conflict that many of them seem to perceive as both inevitable and desirable.
The Intercept
