Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News
11/1
- A federal judge has thrown out conspiracy theorist and former InfoWars DC bureau chief Jerome Corsi’s lawsuit against former special counsel Robert Mueller, saying his sweeping claims that Mueller and the government conducted illegal surveillance of him, violated his constitutional rights and leaked grand jury information were lacking in evidence and legal grounding.
- Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano regarding the impeachment process: Ken Starr “handed a tremendous amount of evidence to the House Judiciary Committee. How did he generate that evidence? In secret. What did he do? He put witnesses on before a grand jury … Congressman Schiff is, in my opinion, following the rules of the House.”
- Judge Richard Leon, a GW Bush appointee to the Federal District Court in D.C., fast-tracked a case involving a key impeachment witness, Charles Kupperman, a former deputy to former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Kupperman who was on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky has refused to testify.
- The Treasury Department took steps to ease regulations issued during former President Obama’s administration that were aimed at curbing offshore tax deals. Obama’s Treasury Department issued rules aimed at preventing “corporate inversions” — transactions in which U.S. companies merge with foreign companies and then reincorporate overseas in an effort to lower their US tax burden.
- Trump has reportedly changed his primary residence from Manhattan to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, FL, according to documents filed with the Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
- Trump administration is expected to roll back an Obama-era regulation meant to limit the leaching of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury into water supplies from the ash of coal-fired power plants, according to two people familiar with the plans.
- Trump Tweeted about a “blowout” 303,000 jobs figure. Minutes earlier an official government report said the economy added 128,000 jobs in October.
- Trump administration rules giving employers with religious or moral objections the right to opt out of Obamacare’s requirement that they provide birth control coverage in employee health plans aren’t enforceable ruled the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
- A Trump Administration new policy would allow anyone receiving Department of Health and Human Services grants to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, and religion. This announcement will immediately allow all grantees, including foster care and adoption agencies, to ignore a 2016 Obama Administration rule that explicitly protected LGBTQ people and others.
- Trump’s personal pastor, Paula White-Cain, has joined the Trump administration. White-Cain will work in the Office of Public Liaison, which is responsible for engaging with Americans to improve awareness of and involvement in the work of the State Department at home and abroad. The pastor’s role will be to advise the administration’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which Trump established last year in May.
- The Trump administration is withholding $105 million in aid to Lebanon following the resignation of the country’s prime minister amid weeks of protests.
- Trump has abandoned any idea of proposing steps to combat gun violence that his White House debated for months following mass shootings in August, a reversal from the summer when the president insisted he would offer policies to curb firearm deaths, wary that gun legislation could splinter his political coalition, which he needs to stick together for his reelection bid, particularly amid an impeachment battle.
NOTE: White House officials said there haven’t been substantive discussions in weeks. A person close to the National Rifle Association said discussions between the White House and the group have gone silent in a sign that the powerful gun lobby is no longer concerned the White House will act. Trump was pressed repeatedly by NRA President Wayne LaPierre this summer and early fall to not propose any gun-control measures.
- Evangelical leader Franklin Graham is urging the public to pray for President Trump as the House impeachment inquiry moves into a new phase.
The Past 24 Hours Or So 