Trump to launch investigation into unproven, unverified voter fraud – concerns abound about tougher voting rules
New York Times: WASHINGTON — President Trump intends to move forward with a major investigation of voter fraud that he says cost him the popular vote, White House officials said Wednesday, despite bipartisan condemnation of his allegations and the conclusion of Mr. Trump’s own lawyers that the election was “not tainted.”
In his first days in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has renewed his complaint that millions of people voted illegally, depriving him of a popular-vote majority.
Reuters: President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would seek an investigation into what he believes was voter fraud in last November’s election, despite an overwhelming consensus among state officials, election experts, and politicians that it is rare in the United States.
The announcement drew rebukes from both Republicans and Democrats who said the Republican president’s unsubstantiated claims of large-scale fraud could undermine voting rights efforts as well as confidence in the new U.S. chief executive.
“Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” – Trump on Twitter
Reuters: President Donald Trump’s plans to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in the 2016 election could pave the way for tough voting rules including stringent ID requirements that Democrats and rights groups say would amount to a new assault on voting rights.
“If you look throughout history, these allegations of fraud have always been deployed as a justification for restricting access to the ballot,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Repeated studies have shown that voter fraud is exceptionally rare in U.S. elections and almost always the result of isolated mistakes, not a systematic attempt to cheat the system.
Source: https://nyti.ms/2ktkEHm, http://reut.rs/2j4BkIY, http://reut.rs/2kuO9N7
Trump begins process to start ramping up border security, build border wall with Mexico
Washington Post: President Trump on Wednesday began putting in place his plan to ratchet up immigration enforcement, following through on major campaign pledges by signing executive actions to build a border wall with Mexico and cut off funds to cities that do not report undocumented immigrants to federal authorities.
The presidential directives signed Wednesday aim to create more detention centers, add thousands of Border Patrol agents and withhold federal funds from what are known as sanctuary cities, which do not comply with federal immigration laws. One order calls for the “immediate construction of a physical wall.”
New York Times: WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday began a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, ordering the immediate construction of a border wall with Mexico and aggressive efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants. He planned additional actions to cut back on legal immigration, including barring Syrian refugees from entering the United States.
Taken together, the moves would turn the full weight of the federal government to fortifying the United States border, rounding up some of the 11 million people who are in the country illegally and targeting refugees, who are often among the world’s most vulnerable people. It is an aggressive use of presidential power that follows through on the nationalistic vision Mr. Trump presented during his presidential campaign.
Source: http://wpo.st/TV3V2, https://nyti.ms/2kunFv0
Trump drafts executive order to revive CIA black site prisons
Reuters: President Donald Trump may order a review that could lead to bringing back a CIA program for holding terrorism suspects in secret overseas “black site” prisons where interrogation techniques often condemned as torture were used, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The officials said Trump is expected to sign an executive order in the next few days. It would call for a high-level review into “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” and whether the CIA should run the facilities, according to a copy of the draft published by the Washington Post.
Independent (UK): President Donald Trump is expected to lift the ban on overseas CIA “black site” prisons, reversing an executive action signed by Barack Obama to shut down such sites.
The draft order, titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants”, would also revoke the International Committee of the Red Cross’ access to wartime detainees.
New York Times: WASHINGTON — It contained crossed-out phrases and typos. It said that the Sept. 11 attacks occurred in 2011, rather than a decade earlier. It was clearly not meant for public consumption.
But the draft of a Trump administration executive order that spilled into public view early Wednesday — a document that raised the prospect of reviving C.I.A. “black site” prisons like those where terrorism suspects were once detained and tortured — has the potential to further fracture a national security team already divided over one of the most controversial policies of the post-9/11 era.
Source: http://reut.rs/2jRJGAQ, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cia-black-site-executive-order-torture-waterboarding-latest-a7545786.html, https://nyti.ms/2k5uySY
Trump administration reverses course on removing climate change data from EPA website
ScienceMag: Trump administration officials appear to have walked back plans to scrub climate change references from U.S. EPA’s website.
“We’ve been told to stand down,” an EPA employee told E&E News today. That new directive comes after staff were told yesterday to remove the agency’s climate change page from its website, worrying climate change activists and sending data specialists scrambling to download files.
Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/trump-officials-suspend-plan-delete-epa-climate-web-page
Trump reaffirms his belief that waterboarding ‘absolutely’ works
ABC News: In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Donald Trump said he “absolutely” thinks waterboarding works and would consider reinstating it as an interrogation technique, depending on the advice of Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Trump explained it’s important to reconsider the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique because, he said, “we’re not playing on an even field.”
Source: http://abcn.ws/2k4LAAI
Trump administration senior staff are using a private email server, Trump is using an unsecured Android phone
Engadget: Donald Trump’s senior White House staff including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon all use a private RNC email server, according to a Newsweek report published Wednesday. This is the same RNC email server that mysteriously disappeared 22 million messages during George W Bush’s administration and the one that US intelligence services believe was compromised by the Russians at the same time as the DNC’s, earlier this year.
Of course, given how hard the Trump campaign hammered Clinton of her own use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State, this is not a good look. Not only does this impact the White House’s ability to operate transparently, it leaves the administration vulnerable to further cyber-intrusions from foreign intelligence services. The Russians have already shown that getting in isn’t particularly difficult, it’s only a matter of time before they — and anybody else of a mind — will try again.
Newsweek: Updated | Senior Trump administration staffers, including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, have active accounts on a Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, Newsweek has learned.
The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.
But after then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republicans repeatedly called for “locking up” Hillary Clinton for handling government work with a private server while secretary of state, the new White House staff risks repeating the same mistake that dogged the Democrat’s presidential campaign.
Ars Technica: Donald Trump continues to use his “old, unsecured Android phone” since taking office despite “the protests of some of his aides,” according to a report from The New York Times about how the new president is settling in to his routine. This contradicts another report from late last week that indicated Trump had given up the phone in exchange for a “secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service.”
How big of a deal is this? We don’t know anything about the phone’s configuration, but the state of Android security is notoriously poor compared to other operating systems like iOS or Windows, both of which are patched regularly by Apple and Microsoft with no interference from hardware manufacturers or wireless carriers.
In any case, it’s surprising that Trump has kept his old phone—the Trump campaign spent months criticizing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her alleged mishandling of sensitive e-mails, and her campaign has claimed that the FBI’s statements on the case may have cost her the election.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/25/trumps-most-senior-staff-use-a-private-email-server, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-emails-rnc-reince-priebus-white-house-server-548191, https://arstechnica.com/?post_type=post&p=1029271
Trump to announce Supreme Court nominee on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017
Trump preparing to reduce United States role in United Nations
Reuters: The Trump administration is preparing executive orders that would clear the way to drastically reduce the U.S. role in the United Nations and other international organizations, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Source: http://reut.rs/2jfTcfl