5: Why Trump’s Quiet Crusade Against Regulations Matters
The one thing he’s good at is keeping the federal government from doing things.
Every year, federal agencies agencies issue thousands of rules and regulations governing mundane things that almost no one notices, but which matter a great deal. They run the gamut from guidelines on how to kill chickens to orders on when a single drawbridge should open or close. But this year, the feds will likely issue far fewer of these regulations. While Donald Trump’s poor planning and web of scandals have stalled his agenda in Congress, his administration is living up to one of his promises: It’s blocking and delaying all the rules and regulations it can.
Two reports out this week, from the moderate conservative American Action Forum (AAF) and Politico show just how drastically Trump and his cabinet and agency heads have slowed the pace of the issuance of new federal rules and regulations. “By virtually any measure, dating back through two Democratic presidents and one Republican president,” AAF regulatory expert Sam Batkins wrote in his report, “the lack of regulatory output is historic.”
Vice News
4: Qatar denounces Gulf states’ ‘policy of domination’
A senior counter-terrorism adviser to Qatar’s foreign minister has hit out at the diplomatic squeeze on Doha by several Gulf states, calling it a “policy of domination and control”.
Mutlaq al-Qahtani, a special envoy to Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the decision to sever ties by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt – as well as other allies – over Qatar’s alleged funding of armed groups would not prove successful.
“I think this is not about counter-terrorism, it’s not about terror financing,” he told AFP news agency.
“I think it is about an orchestrated campaign against my country to pressure my country to change its active, independent foreign policy. This policy of domination and control is not going to work.”
Qahtani added: “When it comes to terrorism, Qatar has never supported terrorism, Qatar does not support terrorism, Qatar will not support terrorism.”
Aljazeera
3: Jeremy Corbyn Is Leading the Left Out of the Wilderness and Toward Power
THANK YOU, Jeremy Corbyn.
It is no exaggeration to say that the British Labour Party leader has changed progressive politics in the UK, and perhaps the wider West too, for a generation. The bearded, 68-year-old, self-declared socialist has proved that an unashamedly, unabashedly, unapologetically left-wing offer is not the politics of the impossible but, rather, a politics of the very much possible. Last Thursday’s election result in the UK is a ringing confirmation that stirring idealism need not be sacrificed at the altar of political pragmatism.
In these dark, depressing times of Trump and Brexit, of the fallout from the Great Recession and the rise of the far right, Corbyn has reminded us that a politics of hope can go toe to toe with a politics of fear. Millions of peoplewill turn out to vote for a leader who preaches optimism over pessimism, who offers inspiration instead of enervation.
Corbyn has proved that the much-maligned young can be a force for change. Younger voters are not lazy, indifferent or apathetic, as the conventional wisdom goes, but will in fact come out in their droves for a leader who motivates and excites them; who gives them not just something to vote for — be it a scrapping of tuition fees or a higher minimum wage or a new house-building program — but something to believe in. A common struggle, a better future, a more equal society. Because something always beats nothing.
Corbyn has showed how it is possible for progressives to build a coalition between the young, people of color and cosmopolitan liberals on the one hand and, yes, those dreaded white working class communities on the other. It is a fiction to claim that leaders on the left must choose between them, or play one marginalized group off against another. White ex-UKIP voters in the north of the country returned to Labour last week in their hundreds of thousands.
The Intercept
British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a major setback Thursday in an election that saw her Conservative Party lose its majority in Parliament less than two weeks before the country is scheduled to begin talks over exiting from the European Union. May called the snap election three years early, expecting to win a large mandate to negotiate with European leaders over the terms of the so-called Brexit. Instead, Conservatives were left without a clear majority and a hung Parliament. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who ran on a platform of “For the many, not the few,” said Thursday’s election results show voters are “turning their backs on austerity.” We’re joined by Paul Mason, columnist for The Guardian, and Mehdi Hasan, award-winning British journalist and broadcaster at Al Jazeera English. He is host of the Al Jazeera interview program “UpFront” and a columnist for The Intercept.Democracy Now
1: Theresa May appeals to MPs for support as her future hangs in balance
Theresa May will appeal to her MPs to throw their weight behind her at a crunch meeting on Monday, as her future hangs in the balance after the Conservatives’ majority was wiped out in Thursday’s general election.
The prime minister is expected to signal to her parliamentary colleagues that she will run her government in a more collegiate, less controlling way, after sacrificing her two closest advisers, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy.
May carried out a modest reshuffle of her top team on Sunday as speculation continued to swirl about her future, including bringing back Michael Gove into government as environment secretary, replacing Andrea Leadsom. Gove crashed out of the cabinet last year after challenging May for the Conservative leadership, stymying Boris Johnson’s chances in the process.
With many backbenchers blaming May for the party’s poor performance at the polls, one senior Conservative said she would have to give a “barnstorming” performance at the meeting of the party’s 1922 committee of MPs to hold on to her job.
George Osborne, who was sacked by May as chancellor last year, described her as a “dead woman walking”, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “It is just how long she is going to remain on death row. I think we will know very shortly. We could easily get to the middle of next week and it all collapses for her.”
The Guardian
