Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News
- President Trump will be represented by former Bill Clinton special prosecutors Kenneth Starr and Robert Ray, plus retired Harvard constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz, at his Senate impeachment trial. The three well-known attorneys will have specific speaking roles during the upcoming trial and serve as “clean-up hitters” behind White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, Trump’s longtime personal attorney. Also on the team are Pam Biondi and Jane Raskin.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Brandon Lipps announced new proposed rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them the ability to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students. On her birthday, the USDA has taken another whack at former first lady Michelle Obama’s signature achievement: Establishing stricter nutritional standards for school breakfasts and lunches.
- The National Archives acknowledged this week that it altered a photograph of the Women’s March, which took place the day after President Trump’s inauguration in 2017, to blur some signs held by marchers that were critical of the president. Among the alterations are the blotting out of the word “Trump” in a placard that reads “God Hates Trump” and the blurring of the same word in another sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women.” Words on other signs referencing female anatomy were also altered.
- UPDATE: The National Archives announced Saturday it took down a display of the Women’s March after admitting it had blurred anti-Trump images. “We made a mistake,” the Archives said on Twitter. “As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration.” “We have removed the current display and will replace it as soon as possible with one that uses the unaltered image. We apologize, and will immediately start a thorough review of our exhibit policies and procedures so that this does not happen again,” the Archives added.
- Andrew Peek, the head of European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, has left his post three months after he started. Peek was escorted from White House on Friday
- President Trump on Saturday ripped the “sea wall” that was proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect New York City from damaging natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, ripping the plan as “costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly.” The proposal, which would create a six-mile long barrier of man-made islands with retractable gates, is expensive, but not $200 billion like Trump claimed in his tweet.
- President Trump announced a major rollback to an Obama-era water rule that expanded the types of waterways protected by federal law and aimed to stop pollution from reaching larger sources of water, including those used for drinking water.
The Past 24 Hours Or So 