#"Trump's blustering got him into the White House. Now he's trying to govern the same way, issuing a flood of executive orders backed up by menacing, thuggish language, lashing out at immigrants, Muslims, the media, Mexicans,and others." "We are witnessing the birth of what could be the largest coordinated regional resistance movement to federal policy since the Civil War." (Source: Sasha Ahamsby, "The West Coast Fights Back Against Trump," The Nation, February 27, 2017).
#Although President Trump has focused on manufacturing jobs, the service sector makes up over 80 percent of U.S. employment. "In 1994, there were 3.5 million more people employed in manufacturing than retail, but now those numbers have nearly flipped." (Source: Bryce Covert + Michael Konczal, "Jobs for a Few," The Nation, February 27, 2017).
#"Polling before the election showed that seven in ten Americans agreed the government should do something about global warming. Polling after the election showed that 86 percent of voters -- including three out of four of those who voted for Trump -- supported action to accelerate the development and use of clean energy." "The courts don't look kindly on arbitrary reversals of rules that have been finalized and implemented, especially when they're supported by a mountain of scientific evidence."
#U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson turned an earlier temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction. Hawaii's Attorney General Douglas Chin argued that the ban's implied message is like a "neon light flashing 'Muslim ban, Muslim ban' that the government didn't bother to turn off."
#Health and Housing Secretary Tom Price said on March 29 that he plans to undo parts of the Affordable Care Act through regulations and non-enforcement. Price outlined how his department could make insurance plans cheaper by scaling back several federal mandates. And he refused to say he will keep providing subsidies for insurers participating in the federal marketplace. He also said: "We believe that the current law has harmed many individuals."
#The Energy Department's international climate office told staff to stop using the phrase "climate change," "emissions reduction," and "Paris agreement."
#Economists at the University of Massachusetts found that spending on education creates 2.5 times as many jobs as spending the equivalent amount on the military. The United States have been at war except for relatively short periods in its history.
#Budget Director Mulvaney told CNBC's John Harwood that Trump's "goal of eliminating the debt" by the end of his second term was "hyperbole." He said there was no way he could eliminate $20 trillion in debt.
#Federal Judge Nelva Ramos Gonzales ruled for the second time that the Texas ID law was discriminatory.. She had previously ruled that the law was discriminatory, but an appeals court told her to consider if it was deliberately discriminatory. On April 10, she ruled that the law "was passed, at least in part, with a discriminatory intent in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965." In her new ruling, she said the law "revealed a pattern of conduct unexplainable on non-racial grounds, to suppress minority voting."
# "The simple fact is that Pyongyang would have no nuclear weapons if Clinton's agreements had been sustained." "But North Korea reportedly has some 15,000 underground facilities of a national-security nature. It is insane to imagine the Marines traipsing around the country in such a 'search and secure operation." (Source: Bruce Cumings, "Korean War Drums," The Nation, April 10, 2017).
#"Iowa now gets 36 percent of its electricity from wind, a higher percentage than any other state, even California." "In 2016, some 9,000 Iowans worked in the wind industry, about a fifth of the number operating farms." (Source: Maddie Oatman, "The Gust Belt," Mother Jones, May/June 2017).
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