THE RESISTANCE - Fight Our Fake President (Part 2)

"Here’s How You Can Use Trump Town" by Derek Kravitz, and Al Shaw + Alex Mierjeski (ProPublica), ProPublica 4/4/2018

We’ve assembled thousands of records of Trump administration appointees. Here’s how you can use them in your stories.

President Donald Trump sits atop a sprawling executive branch, with thousands of hand-picked lieutenants across dozens of agencies who make sure his agenda is pursued and his priorities are followed.

Presidential appointees have historically wielded a significant amount of power, playing dealmaker on Capitol Hill and handling billion-dollar budgets in federal offices.

With all of this hiring going on, it’s important that the public gets a chance to know who these new power players are and what conflicts of interest they may have.  Figuring that out can be difficult, requiring painstaking, laborious research and public records sleuthing.

While lobbying and financial information on political appointees is required to be released by law, federal agencies are not allowed to make this information searchable.  So we did.

Trump Town is a searchable database of 2,684 Trump administration political appointees, including their jobs and offices, employment history, lobbying records, government ethics documents and financial disclosures.  We made the data available and easy to use so journalists and researchers can use it in their work.

See the Database

It is searchable by staffer name, federal agency or former employer.  For example, you can find all 375 Trump political appointees within the West Wing and larger White House Office, from Trump’s chief of staff John F. Kelly to the lowest-paid office employees: 24 executive assistants and research analysts.

Since the database launched in March, we’ve added 204 people.  We and other news organizations have also found a lot of stories in the datasets we’ve posted online.  Here’s a list of stories other news organizations produced using some of those datasets.

We’re devoting this week’s episode of “Trump, Inc.” to Trump Town, and how everyone can help find stories in it.

Do you know something about a political appointee or about the work they’re doing?  Send us an email at trump@ProPublica.org or send a Signal message to 347-244-2134.

Interested in using the data in your reporting?  Here are some ideas to get you started.

The Pipeline

Explore the path from conservative think tanks to the federal government.

We’ve found a large hiring pipeline between the Trump administration and conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation.  There are similar links between the administration and Koch Brothers-affiliated political groups.  We looked at 35 prominent conservative policy shops in Washington and found that at least 125 Trump political appointees used to work for them.

The Heritage Foundation and the Koch network groups are deeply invested in helping shape Trump policies and their former employees hold top spots in the administration.

Andrew Bremberg started his new job as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, which helps develop, coordinate and execute domestic policy and advise the President, on Inauguration Day.  He’d been with Trump before, though, as a policy consultant to the transition team, at the same time advising clients including conservative groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, and the Koch nonprofit Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.

It requires an extra step to make Bremberg's connections clear.  On his disclosure form, he lists his last job as a manager at Right Policy LLC, a generically named limited liability company.  It’s only in the endnote where Bremberg says this was his policy consulting shop: “This is my LLC through which I did policy consulting for the 4 listed clients.”

Others have connections to the Koch network that are easier to detect: Marc Short, assistant to the President and director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, recently served as President of Freedom Partners.

Paul Winfree, who came from the Heritage Foundation to serve the White House as a deputy assistant to the President, among other roles, walked right back through the revolving door.  After announcing his resignation last December, Winfree returned to his post at the Heritage Foundation.

We haven’t yet explored all of the political appointees’ influence at the government agencies they now work for, or the policies they’ve helped to shape.  We’ve grouped all of the political appointees that we found working on deregulation teams created by the Trump administration.  They can be found here.

Special Government Employees

When administration staffers keep their jobs outside the government, it can create conflicts and raise questions about who they really work for.

Special-government employees, or SGEs, are outside experts and consultants who are hired temporarily (some paid, some not) by federal agencies to provide advice and guidance or even to make government policy.  SGEs are allowed to keep their jobs in the private sector while working for the government, which can set up conflicts of interest.

Wendy Teramoto, chief of staff to Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, was initially hired as an SGE while keeping her job as a managing director and partner at Ross’s investment firm W.L. Ross & Co.  She’s since resigned from the firm.

SGEs have been allowed since the 1960s, after Kennedy administration agencies argued that the government couldn’t “obtain the expertise it needs if it requires experts to forego their private professional lives as a condition of temporary service.” SGEs are by no means unique to the Trump administration — Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was for a time an SGE, working for the secretary of state as well as for Teneo, a consulting firm.

At the Department of Transportation, Thomas Martin Fiorentino Jr. was making between $10,512 and $15,800 per month as an SGE in the Immediate Office of the Secretary while he ran his lobbying and consulting firm, the Fiorentino Group.  Fiorentino describes himself as one of Florida’s most prolific political fundraisers, as well as “one of the largest fundraisers in the nation” in the last four Presidential elections.

Fiorentino left the Trump administration on May 1, according to Transportation Department officials, but his consultant job was only disclosed last month through a Freedom of Information Act response from the agency.  In a statement, the Transportation Department said “consultants do not have decision-making authority, and could not approve actions or sign documents for agency actions.”  Read the Department of Transportation's full comment.

We have requested the names, titles and employment information of these government consultants and have included several dozen spread across seven different agencies.  You could dig into what these folks do for their day jobs and the conflicts that might present.

Diversity

Demographic analyses of government staffers could show us if they reflect the taxpayers they serve.

Back in March 2017, Bloomberg used an earlier version of our data to show that just 27 percent of political appointees in the new Trump administration were women.  A year later, The Atlantic did a similar analysis, finding the gender breakdown had only improved slightly, to 33 percent.  That’s compared to the 2 million-plus federal workforce in the executive branch, which is 43 percent female, and the entire U.S. workforce, in which 47 percent of employees are women.

Similar demographic analyses focusing on age or ethnicity could be done.  The goal: to see if the Trump administration reflects the public it serves.  You could also background individual employees to estimate ages, using LinkedIn, resumes and other biographical information.

Revolving Door

Watch who switches between being a lobbyist for an industry and a regulator keeping watch on that industry.

The Trump administration has been increasingly receptive to industry stakeholders and, in some instances, has tasked former lobbyists to act as the go-betweens between the private and public sectors.

For instance, Dean Heyl, a lobbyist for the International Franchisors Association, a group that served as plaintiff in a nationwide case to block minimum wage and overtime protections for home-care workers, was appointed director of the Office of Public Liaison, within the Department of Labor.

After one meeting with members of Fixed Annuity Consumer Choice, another industry group, Heyl followed up with a phone call to the group’s leadership.  The group has been lobbying the federal government to prevent an amendment to the so-called “Fiduciary Rule,” which would potentially create another costly layer of regulation for independent insurance agents.

“Dean was very helpful in orchestrating our meeting.  We look at him as a more outgoing facilitator, between the public and the department,” said Dwight Carter, the group’s co-chairman.  “I personally look at it as a monumental improvement.”

In the Obama administration’s Labor Department, the Office of Public Liaison was re-branded the Office of Public Engagement and sought to balance its meeting schedule with worker advocates and business interests.  But lobbyist and industry connections still existed in the Obama years; Labor’s public engagement office was once run by a former McDonald’s media relations manager, Ofelia Casillas.

The Department of Labor said it has an “open door policy” with all stakeholders.  “Mr. Heyl brings deep experience in the public and private sectors to leading the Department’s external engagement activities,” Labor Department spokesman Eric Holland said.

Shell Game

Dig into the shell companies, and see what they do.

One example we found in the “Paradise Papers,” the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ trove of offshore financial and legal records, is Wilbur Ross’ corporate entity, WLR China Energy Associates, Ltd., which is based in the Cayman Islands and connected to his private equity firm.

If you see employers or assets held as LLCs and want to learn more about what they do, run them through corporate registries such as OpenCorporates, the Delaware Secretary of State site search, or property records databases like New York City’s ACRIS.

Contracts

Check if political appointees’ former employers have federal contracts.

We also made it easy to look for connections between appointees and federal contractors.  Use the organizations page to cross reference federal employees’ former employers with the Federal Procurement Data System.

Is a former employee now at an agency where he or she has sway over which companies win contracts?  Or flip the equation: If you’re looking into a contractor and wondering about crossover, run the name in Trump Town and see what turns up.

Breaking News

You can use Trump Town to provide context for breaking news related to Trump administration staffers.

On March 12, Trump aide John D. McEntee was fired from his White House job after an undisclosed concern about his finances led to the revocation of his security clearance.  The day the story broke you could have used Trump Town to do some digging on McEntee.

In addition to his previous work for the Trump campaign, the 27-year-old lists one other job since he finished college — as a production assistant at Fox News — as well as two bank accounts.

With the pace of developments coming out of this White House, it’s an easy bet that Trump Town will come in handy in a breaking news situation — and soon.

Waivers

See what ethics waivers have been granted, and what they mean for public policy.

New executive branch appointees are made to sign ethics pledges meant to limit their involvement in issues they’ve lobbied on.  But special waivers can help staffers get around those pledges.  Take Environmental Protection Agency agricultural adviser Jeffrey Sands.

Sands is a former lobbyist for the agribusiness giant Syngenta, whose flagship herbicide, Atrazine, is used on crops and lawns and has been associated with a variety of reproductive health problems.

Ethics experts told us that Sands’ waiver, which allows him to advise on a “broad range of agricultural interests” at a time when Atrazine is under review at the EPA, is a “major conflict of interest.” Sands’ waiver wasn’t made public until we started asking the EPA about it, and they declined to answer questions about his involvement in the agency’s ongoing review of Atrazine.

Sands is hardly the only Trump administration employee with an ethics waiver.  Former associates and partners at the Jones Day law firm — so far we’ve found 15 of them appointed by Trump — enjoy a blanket waiver when they join the administration, allowing them to communicate with their old employer and work on some subjects they had previously handled at Jones Day.

Trump has given out dozens of ethics waivers across the administration, and you can thumb through all of them here.

Missing

Find what’s missing, intentionally or not.

It is illegal to make intentionally false or misleading statements or omissions on federal financial disclosure forms.  But, in practice, ethics attorneys say many pieces of information, including assets and debts, get left out.

Last year, we found that James E. Cason, a deputy administrator at the Department of the Interior, left off details about a $50,000, five-month contract he had with the Quapaw tribe of Oklahoma.  At Interior, Cason oversees tribal lands and was named in a $175 million lawsuit the tribe brought in 2013, stemming from his earlier government work.  He also has referenced the Quapaws in government meetings on Capitol Hill, as recently as June.

When we asked Interior officials about Cason's missing financial details, they called it an “oversight” and corrected it.

Why We’re Making This Public

Why doesn’t the federal government make political appointees’ financial disclosures searchable themselves?

It tried, in 2012.  But they were stopped by a group of former federal officials in law enforcement, diplomatic and national security positions.  The group wrote to congressional leaders, saying a searchable list “will create significant threats to the national security and to the personal safety and financial security of the executive branch officials and their families, especially career employees.”

The letter also called complete personal financial information of all senior officials on the internet a “jackpot for enemies of the United States intent on finding security vulnerabilities they can exploit.”

We’re publishing this information because without it the public would have no meaningful way to scrutinize a powerful and often hidden cadre within the federal bureaucracy.  We see Trump Town as a key tool for understanding appointees’ interests and potential conflicts.

It is for this reason — to allow for transparency — that senior executives within the federal government have for decades filled out annual financial disclosure reports under the Ethics in Government Act.  And it’s why, for political appointees, these forms are public.  Note that we are not publishing details about career civil servants.

Furthermore, federal financial disclosure reports already comply with the Privacy Act, which prohibits an agency from disclosing key personal information that would be valuable to outside actors and third-party groups.

THE RESISTANCE - Fight Our Fake President (Part 1)

"How Do You Identify Fake News?" by Vignesh Ramachandran, ProPublica 4/4/2018

At the beginning of the year, we asked ProPublica Illinois readers what they wanted to know about how we do our work.  Thoughtful, challenging questions have been rolling in ever since, and we’ve been answering them in an occasional series of columns.  ProPublica Illinois web producer Vignesh Ramachandran answers an inquiry about spotting false news.

Can someone please publish an article explaining how to identify fake news?  — Rachel Lietz

Remember when 318 people were shot in Chicago on Halloween 2015 and former President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in the city?  Or when Hillary Clinton ran a child sex-trafficking ring from the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor?  Or when First Lady Melania Trump used a body double in public appearances?

All these events received news coverage.  All were fake.

It’s troubling how much traction false news can get.  Like when major news sources splashed headlines over the Trump administration’s claims that Chicago’s gun violence was occurring in a “city with the strongest gun laws in our country.”  Not true, either.  Local media have countered that claim time and again.  The nonpartisan political fact-checker PolitiFact called President Donald Trump’s comments about this “Pants on Fire!” the worst rating on its Truth-O-Meter.

So how do you tell the difference between real and false news?  Or, as a CNN commercial about this issue put it, an apple from a banana?

Experts who study media and the rise of misinformation say you should approach all the news you read with a certain level of doubt, said Dan Gillmor, a professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“Part of what we have to do ourselves is to create an internal speed bump, where we say, ‘Just wait a minute’ before you believe anything,” Gillmor said.

A healthy level of skepticism is key.  Prominent political rhetoric right now, including from Trump, is troublesome, as the President and others sometimes label stories from even the most rigorous news organizations as fake when they’re not.

The more sensational a news item sounds, the more skeptical you should be, Gillmor said.  That is no simple task.  But journalism that is critical of ideas or figures you already dislike should provoke heightened skepticism, he said, because, “We like it when we see information that confirms our internal beliefs.”

It’s also wise to seek out trustworthy news organizations, though that’s easier said than done in a world in which we often encounter stories on platforms that make their origins unclear and in which unfamiliar and, in some cases, ideologically driven news sources proliferate.  Information comes to us from friends, family, co-workers and via algorithms, as well as from websites we visit, TV news we watch and newspapers we read.

“All of that is just one really huge combination of disparate sources, disparate information coming from credible and often uncredible places,” said Craig Silverman, media editor at BuzzFeed News, who writes about misinformation.

So audiences shouldn’t give all news sources the same weight.

“If (news organizations) are not applying reporting, and they’re not willing to report things that are inconvenient to their perspective, then they’re probably not very reliable,” Silverman said.

False news is also often twisted to present a story that triggers you emotionally, whether that’s anger or sadness, Silverman said.  “If they can do that, then the chances of you reacting to it by liking it or retweeting it are much greater.”

So, you need what Silverman calls “emotional skepticism,” as well.

Fake news creator Jestin Coler knows misinformation tactics well.  He was behind prominent fake news sites like the Denver Guardian, which made headlines just days before the 2016 Presidential election with a false story about an FBI agent found dead in a murder-suicide after investigating Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  Coler recommends examining the “about,” “staff,” and “contact” pages for legitimate information, as well as double-checking the URL structures of the websites you visit to determine who is behind the site and their agenda.

“A common technique in the fake news industry is to create sites that mirror well-known domains/site names but use visual tricks (extra domain extensions like ‘.com.co’ or ‘.com.de’) or similar names,” Coler told ProPublica Illinois in an email.

Major tech platforms like Google and Facebook are attempting to help separate fact from fiction after facing criticism for their inaction, but the internet is still, to a large extent, the Wild West.  Gillmor, however, is cautiously optimistic.

“I hope we’re heading in a better direction,” Gillmor said “But it took a long, long time to dig the hole we’re in.  And it’s going to take some time to get out of it.”

Additional Resources
In the past few years, there have been countless articles and resources discussing misinformation and explaining how to identify false news.  Here are some favorites:

• First Draft has some thoughts on how we all play a crucial part in the information ecosystem, as well as five tips for avoiding getting fooled by fake websites.

• NPR discusses how to think like a fact-checker.

• The Trust Project’s Trust Indicators are trying to create standards of transparency in journalism.

• Huffington Post has nine tips for spotting fake news.

THE RESISTANCE - Lady Rachel Maddow, House Stark

House Stark - Game of Thrones

THE RESISTANCE - Political Cartoons

Republican actions to-date say.....

Trump is NEVER at fault

THE RESISTANCE - Shouldn’t Jared Kushner Be Arrested?

The Resistance

with Keith Olbermann

THE RESISTANCE - Sally Yates is an American Hero

The Resistance

with Keith Olbermann

THE RESISTANCE - Trump Land in Pictures

Trump, without the cloak field

Trump Ego Display

TRUMP AGENDA - Who IS That Pulling the Strings??

"The Right-Wing Machine Behind the Curtain" by Theo Anderson, In These Times 3/14/2017

The radical conservative Heritage Foundation has spent 40 years trying to gut the federal budget.  Now Trump is providing to be the perfect tool.

THE MOOD WAS JUBILANT TWO DAYS AFTER THE NOVEMBER 2016 ELECTION at a Washington, D.C., panel co-hosted by two powerhouse conservative thinktanks—the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

In his opening remarks, Heritage president Jim DeMint rejoiced that Donald Trump's election had “preserved our constitutional republic.”  Panelist John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor best known as the architect of George W. Bush's justification for torture, drew laughs with feigned surprise at the audience size.  “I thought everyone at Heritage was working over at transition head quarters,” Yoo quipped.  “I asked the taxi cab driver to take me to Trump transition headquarters, and he dropped me off here.”

Indeed, Politico reported in November that Heritage, based in D.C., had become “a crucial conduit between Trump's orbit and the once-skeptical conservative leaders who ultimately helped get him elected.”  By Heritage's own account, “several dozen” of its staff members worked on the transition team, and Trump used its recommendations for his list of potential Supreme Court picks.

Vice President Mike Pence, the head of that transition team, has deep ties to the foundation.  In 2006, Heritage co-founder Paul Weyrich, a mentor of Pence's, said of him, “Nobody is perfect, but he comes pretty close.”  In early December, Pence gave the keynote speech at a Heritage event (held at Trump's D.C.  hotel) to honor its biggest donors.  He promised that the Trump administration “is now and will continue to draw on” the institution's work.

Heritage defines its mission as creating “an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish.”  It has an annual budget of about $100 million and a staff of about 90 “experts” who hold such pseudo-academic titles as “research fellow' and “policy analyst.”  One example is libertarian economist Stephen Moore, a Trump advisor and a Heritage “distinguished visiting fellow.”

Heritage's ties to the administration have received relatively little press.  With its academic gloss, it may seem benign set against the extremism and zaniness that dominate the headlines: a press secretary only marginally less bizarre than the Saturday Night Live spoof of him; a key advisor who embraces the role of Darth Vader; cabinet picks who have promised to abolish the institutions they lead; executive orders that stigmatize Muslims and violate the Constitution; attacks on the press as “the enemy of the American people”; and on and on.

Yet a grim reality underlies the White House circus.  Trump's election is the culmination of a radical right-wing movement that began with the founding of Heritage in 1973.  “We are different from previous generations of conservatives,” Weyrich said in the early 1980s.  “We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country.”

Trump is that movement's best hope yet for achieving its great dream of gutting government.  Heritage isn't an appendage of the Trump administration's radicalism.  It's the heart of it.  Trump is just a tool.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Kill the Sick to Save Money

"Tennessee woman dies after losing government benefits and medicine" by Walter Einenkel, Daily KOS 3/15/2017

My first question is how in hell does the Social Security Administration get the right to decide that you sick or not?!  That's for doctors to decide.

Amy Schnelle died a little less than a month ago due to an epileptic seizure she suffered at her home in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The 31-year-old former factory worker had suffered from severe seizures and was on disability.  Her government subsidized disability paid for her very strong anti-seizure medication.  That was until September.

On disability for several years, Amy Schnelle was receiving powerful anti-seizure drugs and had been seizure free since 2015.  Then the United States Social Security Administration threw her a curve ball in September 2016 when they informed her she was no longer sick.

Schnelle appealed this decision and in January of this year, the Social Security Administration put her back on disability.  However, according to her mother, the time spent off of the drugs had a terrible effect on Amy Schnelle's health.

“She had a whole lot of seizures because one of the medicines didn't come through,” said Sylvia Schnelle.  “Once you stop your medicine so abruptly you go into a tailspin of seizures and you don't come out of it.”

Writing to Congressman Jimmy Duncan, Amy Schnelle was able to convince the government to resume her benefits.  That happened in January 2017, but in February 2017, from her apartment, she texted her mother she had a “bad” seizure and asked her to “please” come.  Her mother rushed to Knoxville from her home in Dandridge.

Part of the Republican concept of healthcare is that you die or to go to the emergency room, and hopefully get lucky and don't die.  What happened to Amy Schnelle can and will continue to happen to many more people now that tax breaks for the rich are the main focus of our government's healthcare plan.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Trumpcare

"Fact-Checking Elected Officials on the Affordable Care Act Repeal" by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica 3/10/2017

ProPublica is working with other news organizations to collect and analyze letters and emails from elected officials to constituents on the ACA, beginning with a misleading missive by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt.  Send us more!

This story was co-published with Kaiser Health News, Stat and Vox.

Dismayed by the results of the 2016 election, Meg Godfrey decided she needed to do more than vote, share social media posts and sign online petitions.  So she went to the website of Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and typed a note in support of the Affordable Care Act.

“I asked him to use my tax dollars to provide health care to his constituents just like my tax dollars provide health care for him and his family,” she said she wrote.

A short while later, Godfrey received an email reply from Blunt, essentially a form letter explaining why he supported the law's repeal.  “When President Obama signed this bill into law, he assured Americans that they would be able to keep their plans and doctors, while promising choice and affordability,” Blunt wrote.  “Since the law has gone into effect, I have heard from countless Missourians who were unable to keep their insurance plans and/or providers.”

The email then gave a number of statistics to buttress Blunt's position that the law is failing.

But something about the letter didn't sit right with Godfrey, so she forwarded the email to ProPublica, asking us to fact-check it.  Our assessment: The note was misleading and lacked important context.

That led ProPublica to wonder about the accuracy of responses sent to constituents by other members of the House and Senate on the Affordable Care Act and its future.  Today, ProPublica is teaming with journalists at Kaiser Health News, Stat and Vox to gather those missives from our readers.  On Monday, House Republican leaders unveiled their official proposal to repeal and replace the law.  As the legislative debate begins in earnest, we plan to look at the representations made by elected officials from both parties and share what we find.

ProPublica asked Timothy Jost, an ACA expert and emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, to review Blunt's email.  “Some of this information is inaccurate, the rest of it is spin,” he concluded.

A spokesman for Blunt provided citations for the data in the senator's note but did not respond to a follow-up email.

Jost helped us break down Blunt's message:

Blunt's email:

Analysis: The 4.7 million figure came from an Associated Press article from December 2013, Blunt's office said.  Subsequent analyses, however, showed that the figure was overstated.  Two researchers from the Urban Institute, writing in the journal Health Affairs, estimated that the number was closer to 2.6 million.  Moreover, Jost notes, the Obama administration said states could allow insurers to leave transitional plans in place after Jan. 1, 2014.  Missouri was one of the states that did so.  “So if a plan was canceled in Missouri, it was the decision of the insurer, not a federal requirement,” Jost wrote.

Blunt's email: “This year, Missourians who purchase health insurance on the ObamaCare exchanges will see an average of a 25 percent increase on their premium.”

Analysis: The average premium for a Missouri plan did indeed increase by 25 percent this year, according to ACAsignups.net, a website that tracks the law and was cited by Blunt's office.  But that isn't the entire story.  First, the vast majority of marketplace enrollees in Missouri and nationwide receive hefty subsidies that reduce their cost.

Second, if you step out of the aggregate and look instead at a hypothetical person shopping for an affordable plan, the increase is lower.  The Obama administration often compared monthly premiums for a 27-year-old in a benchmark plan (the plan upon which the government calculates subsidies).  In Missouri, the premium actually decreased from $235 to $233 between 2014 and 2015.  It increased 10 percent in 2016 and another 18 percent, to $305, for this year, according to the U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services.

But most enrollees aren't paying the sticker price.  Some 78 percent of Missouri marketplace consumers in 2016 could obtain coverage for $100 or less per month in 2017, after accounting for subsidies from the government, federal data shows.

Blunt's email: “In addition to increased costs, families in Missouri and across the nation have lost the ability to choose a plan that best suits their health care needs.  Missourians in 97 of 114 counties and the city of St. Louis will only have one option on the exchange.”

Analysis: Blunt is technically correct, but again the statistic lacks context, according to Politifact Missouri.  “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of Missouri's roughly 6 million residents, about 63 percent live in the 17 counties and one city that will continue to have at least two provider choices,” the fact-checker wrote in February.

What's missing: Blunt's email did not mention that more than 200,000 Missourians receive coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.  It also didn't mention that health insurance premiums routinely increased by large amounts before the law took effect and that many Missourians with preexisting conditions effectively had no insurers to pick from, Jost said.

The number of people without insurance has gone down under the ACA, falling from 13 percent in 2013 to 9.8 percent in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Blunt spokesman Brian Hart declined to say how many people have written the senator about the ACA and what percentage of them were for or against the law.

Godfrey, who wrote to Blunt, is currently employed as a brand communications manager for a lighting manufacturer.  She and her husband live in Northern California but are moving to St. Louis later this year.  “I'm getting a head-start on my political activism in the state,” she wrote in an email to ProPublica.  “We had planned to retire and get insurance on the exchange.  Now we still plan to move but will, most likely, continue to work until we are eligible for Medicare.”

Godfrey, 62, said Blunt's response to her was “infuriating.”

“I asked about what he was doing to take care of the people who elected him and he spouted misleading statistics,” she wrote.  “I am surprised he didn't bring up death panels [which do not exist].  I hate being treated like an idiot.”

TRUMP AGENDA - Flooding The Federal Government Swamp

"Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government" by Justin Elliott, Derek Kravitz, Al Shaw; ProPublica 3/8/2017

A Trump campaign aide who argues that Democrats committed “ethnic cleansing” in a plot to “liquidate” the white working class.  A former reality show contestant whose study of societal collapse inspired him to invent a bow-and-arrow-cum-survivalist multi-tool.  A pair of healthcare industry lobbyists.  A lobbyist for defense contractors.  An “evangelist” and lobbyist for Palantir, the Silicon Valley company with close ties to intelligence agencies.  And a New Hampshire Trump supporter who has only recently graduated from high school.

These are some of the people the Trump administration has hired for positions across the federal government, according to documents received by ProPublica through public-records requests.

While President Trump has not moved to fill many jobs that require Senate confirmation, he has quietly installed hundreds of officials to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior.

Unlike appointees exposed to the scrutiny of the Senate, members of these so-called “beachhead teams” have operated largely in the shadows, with the White House declining to publicly reveal their identities.

While some names have previously dribbled out in the press, we are publishing a list of more than 400 hires, providing the most complete accounting so far of who Trump has brought into the federal government.

The White House said in January that around 520 staffers were being hired for the beachhead teams.

The list we obtained includes obscure campaign staffers, contributors to Breitbart and others who have embraced conspiracy theories, as well as dozens of Washington insiders who could be reasonably characterized as part of the “swamp” Trump pledged to drain.

The list is striking for how many former lobbyists it contains: We found at least 36, spanning industries from health insurance and pharmaceuticals to construction, energy and finance.  Many of them lobbied in the same areas that are regulated by the agencies they have now joined.

That figure is almost certainly an undercount since we only included those who formally registered as lobbyists, a process increasingly avoided by many in Washington.

During the campaign, Trump said he would have “no problem” banning lobbyists from his administration.  But they have nonetheless ended up in senior roles, aided by Trump's weakening of Obama-era ethics rules that modestly limited lobbyists' role in government.

The White House didn't respond to requests for comment.

There are many former congressional staffers, several top officials from the George W.  Bush administration, and even a handful of holdovers from the Obama administration.  The list also includes at least eight staffers drawn from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that forged close ties to the new administration during the transition.

Much about the role of the beachhead teams at various federal agencies is unclear.  But close observers of the early weeks of the Trump administration believe they have taken on considerable influence in the absence of high-level political appointees.

“If the public and Senate is in the dark about a team created without a Senate confirmation process, no one will be permitted to shed light on who is hopelessly conflicted or who is obviously unqualified — and who is both,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The beachhead team members are temporary employees serving for stints of four to eight months, but many are expected to move into permanent jobs.  The Trump administration's model is based on plans developed but never used by the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.

“The beachhead teams involve people with considerable authority over the federal government,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that advises presidential candidates on smooth transitions.  “We need clarity about what they're doing and what their role is going to be.”

The Obama administration also hired temporary staffers after the inauguration.  But Trump has brought in many more, Stier said.

The new list of names was provided to us by the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources agency.  We received additional names from other federal agencies in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.  At least a few people on the list have changed agencies or left the administration, including, for example, the young Department of Housing and Urban Development staffer who was fired after his anti-Trump writings during the campaign came to light.

Here is a run-down of some of the Trump hires.

The Breitbart wing

Curtis Ellis was a columnist for WorldNetDaily, a website best known for its enthusiastic embrace of the false notion that President Obama was born outside the United States.  A column headlined the “The Radical Left's Ethnic Cleansing of America” won Ellis an admiring interview with Steve Bannon, now Trump's top aide.  He is a longtime critic of trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Ellis was hired Jan. 20 as a special assistant to the Secretary at the Labor Department.  Asked about his role in a brief phone interview Tuesday, he said: “Nothing I can tell you.”

Jon Perdue, a self-described guerrilla warfare expert and fellow at a little-known security think tank, wrote a book called “The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.”  He is also a onetime contributor to Breitbart.

Perdue was featured on CNBC's reality series “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor” for his invention, the Packbow, which Perdue came up with while studying “collapsed societies, and what people who lived in those societies came up with to either defend themselves or to survive.”  It's a bow and arrow that doubles as a compass, tent pole, walking stick, spearfishing rig, and water purification tablet receptacle.

Perdue was hired as a special assistant at the Treasury Department.  The agency didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

John Jaggers ran the Trump campaign in Maryland and Virginia, where he made headlines for endorsing the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was “very, very sick and they're covering it up.”  As he put it last August: “The woman who seeks to be the first female president of the United States wears a wool coat at every single thing.  Have you ever stopped to wonder why?  It's a big deal, folks.”

Jaggers was hired Jan. 20 as senior adviser at the General Services Administration, which oversees tens of billions of dollars of government procurement every year.  But records show he left the job on March 3.  He declined to comment.

Swamp denizens, including health care lobbyists hired by HHS Secretary Tom Price

Alexandra Campau, hired at the department of Health and Human Services, was formerly a lobbyist in Washington for the law firm Cozen O'Connor.  According to disclosure records, her firm's clients included a licensee of insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Fresenius Medical Care, a German company that specializes in medical supplies for renal dialysis.

Timothy Clark, a senior adviser to HHS Secretary Tom Price, ran his own political consulting firm in California.  His past clients included PhRMA, the powerful trade group that represents the pharmaceutical industry.

Keagan Lenihan, also a senior adviser to Price, was a director of government relations at McKesson Specialty Health, a firm that supports independent health providers.  Disclosure records show Lenihan directly lobbied HHS.  For Lenihan, the new post represents a return trip through the revolving door between government and the private sector, and a reunion with an old boss.  Before registering as a lobbyist, she was a senior legislative assistant for Price, when the now-HHS secretary was in Congress.

Asked about the three HHS staffers, an agency spokeswoman said: “We are not confirming or commenting on personnel at this time.”

Justin Mikolay, hired at the Department of Defense, was previously a registered lobbyist for Palantir.  His title at the tech firm was “evangelist.”  Mikolay lobbied for the “procurement/deployment of the Palantir Government software platform” throughout intelligence and defense agencies, according to disclosure records.

Mikolay was a speechwriter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta between 2011 and 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile.  Mikolay also previously served as a speechwriter for current Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  He declined to comment.

Chad Wolf, a Bush-era Transportation Security Administration official turned lobbyist, is currently serving as an adviser to the TSA at the Department of Homeland Security.  His clients have included defense and homeland security contractors.

Reached Tuesday, Wolf declined to comment.  George Rogers, CEO of Wolf's lobbying firm, Wexler Walker, told ProPublica that Wolf is currently on unpaid leave.

As we've previously reported, lobbyists for the construction industry trade association and financial services firm TransAmerica are on the team at the Department of Labor.

Trump campaign vets — including very young ones

The list also includes what appear to be dozens of former Trump campaign staffers, including several who graduated from college last year.  One, Danny Tiso at the Department of Labor, graduated from high school in 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.  He worked for the Trump campaign in New Hampshire.

Seth Harris, who was on the first Obama-Biden transition team and later became a top Labor Department official, said it's not uncommon to bring in campaign staff to agencies — “as long as there are senior political people to direct the junior people.”

“This is how you incorporate the people who are your strongest supporters into the government,” he said.  “There are plenty of junior jobs in the government that these people can do — public-affairs jobs, special assistant jobs.”

Reporting was contributed by Robert Faturechi, Jesse Eisinger, Alison Gregor, Jessica Huseman, Lauren Kirchner, Alec MacGillis, Clifford Michel, T.  Christian Miller, Charles Ornstein, Andrew Revkin, Marcelo Rochabrun, Lisa Song and Annie Waldman.

THE RESISTANCE - Congressional Town Halls

aka 'The Rats Scurry for Cover'

"At congressional town hall meetings, citizens turn up the volume — and activism" PBS NewsHour 2/24/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  With members of Congress on recess, usually that would mean lawmakers meeting with constituents at home in their districts.  But fewer than 30 Republicans are holding meetings in the face of local protests and rowdy town halls.  Lisa Desjardins reports from New Jersey, where five-term Rep. Leonard Lance faced more than a thousand people, ready to let him hear their urgent concerns.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Members of Congress have been on recess this week.  Usually, that would mean a number of constituent town halls in their home states and districts.

But fewer than 30 Republicans are holding those meetings, as protests grow outside some district offices, and constituents rally inside the town halls that are scheduled.

THE RESISTANCE - Trump's Lobbyists Lie

"Trump Then: 'I Would Have No Problem' Banning Lobbyists.  Trump Now: You're Hired!" by Justin Elliott, ProPublica 2/14/2017

During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly welcomed the idea of banning lobbyists from his administration.

Fast forward eight months, and now-President Trump is welcoming them in.

Last June on CBS's “Face the Nation,” host John Dickerson asked Donald Trump:  Given the candidate's drumbeat of criticism of the Washington lobbyist class, “Will you say 'No lobbyists will work for me and no big donors?'”

“I would have no problem with it, honestly,” Trump responded.

After the exchange, a “Face the Nation” producer followed up with campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who confirmed that, yes, Trump was referring to banning lobbyists from his administration.

The sentiment is in line with what Trump told NBC's “Meet the Press” in another interview a year earlier, when he called banning lobbyists from working in his administration “a pretty good idea.”

As ProPublica detailed last week, a longtime construction industry lobbyist who previously worked against wage and workplace safety regulations is now in a key position at the Department of Labor.  The lobbyist, Geoff Burr, is reportedly in line to be chief of staff if Andrew Puzder is confirmed as Labor secretary.

At the Food and Drug Administration, longtime pharmaceutical lobbyist Jack Kalavritinos has a senior role in the agency's early Trump team, according to Stat News.

Kalavritinos spent more than seven years as the chief lobbyist of the medical device and pharmaceutical firm Covidien.  (Covidien was subsequently acquired by Medtronic) In that role, Kalavritinos lobbied the FDA and Congress on a host of issues related to medical device regulation, disclosure records show.  Among the legislation he lobbied on was the Novel Device Regulatory Relief Act and the Food and Drug Administration Mission Reform Act.

Trump himself recently criticized the extensive influence of the pharmaceutical lobby.  “Pharma has a lot of lobbies and a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there's very little bidding on drugs,” he said at a press conference last month.

K Street was a frequent punching bag for Trump on the campaign trail.  He once tweeted:

It's difficult to know how many former lobbyists are now working in the Trump administration.  Both Burr and Kalavritinos are members of Trump's so-called “beachhead teams,” which are made up of officials installed at federal agencies to lay the groundwork while the president's nominees make their way through the Senate confirmation process.  The administration has said there are around 500 such staffers, but has not released a list of names.

Trump last month issued an executive order on ethics for appointees that weakened elements of the Obama-era policy on former lobbyists joining government.

Trump also hired a range of lobbyists into influential positions during the transition period, between Election Day and the inauguration on Jan 20.  As The New York Times noted in November; telecom, energy, and agriculture industry consultants and lobbyists were all named to influential roles.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

TRUMP AGENDA - First Step to American Theocracy

"Trump vows to scrap rule on religious groups and campaign politics" PBS NewsHour 2/2/2017

COMMENT:  I have longed believed that our Founding Fathers meant the freedom of religion to be a right of an individual, NOT a right of a group.  That it means we cannot have laws that allow, or encourage, a religious belief to be enshrined in law and thereby FORCING everyone to practice the religious belief of others.  That would turn our America into a theocracy like Iran, where the religious leaders have veto over any law passed by the legislator.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump used the annual National Prayer Breakfast to reignite an old campaign promise, to change the tax code to allow churches and other tax-exempt groups to openly campaign for political candidates.  John Yang reports on that and more.

JOHN YANG (NewsHour):  Today, President Trump revved up his new administration with a visit from Harley-Davidson executives and workers.

DONALD TRUMP:  Boy, would you like to see me fall off these things?  Would that be a story?

JOHN YANG:  And used the annual National Prayer Breakfast to reignite a campaign promise, vowing to change the tax code to allow churches and other tax-exempt groups to openly campaign for political candidates.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:  I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.  I will do that.  Remember.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

JOHN YANG:  The provision wasn't controversial when then-senator Lyndon Johnson introduced it and President Dwight Eisenhower signed it into law in 1954.  Now some religious leaders, especially conservative Christians, say it violates their freedom of speech.

Speaking at the breakfast, Mr.  Trump also defended his immigration order against critics who say it's a ban on Muslims.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:  In the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty, and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination.

We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values.

JOHN YANG:  There were also lighter moments, as when the President suggested divine intervention for the current incarnation of his TV show, “The Apprentice.”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:  They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place.  And we know how that turned out.  The ratings went right down the tubes.  It's been a total disaster.  I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings, OK?

(LAUGHTER)

JOHN YANG:  Schwarzenegger responded on the President's favorite forum with a Twitter video.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Former California Governor:  Hey, Donald, I have a great idea.

Why don't we switch jobs?  You take over TV, because you're such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job.  And then people can finally sleep comfortably again.

TRUMP AGENDA - Anti-Refugee

"Refugee ban ‘a gift to those that hate us,' says Madeleine Albright" PBS NewsHour 1/30/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Donald Trump's executive order concerning refugees and visa-holders has sparked protests and backlash across the nation and overseas.  Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joins Judy Woodruff to share her rebuke of the White House ban, as well as controversial changes adding Stephen Bannon to the National Security Council.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now, for more on the executive order on refugees and visa holders and changes the President to the makeup of the National Security Council, we turn first to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.  She served as the United States' top diplomat during the Clinton administration.

When we spoke a short time ago, I began by asking her reaction to the Trump White House ban on immigrants from seven countries.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Former U.S. Secretary of State:  Judy, I'm appalled, because it's done everything except keep America safer.

And let me just say, I kind of have looked at things thinking that they made this executive action without really understanding what it's all about.  So, it was unprepared, I would say, because they didn't really see how the government works.  They didn't really contact the various departments that are part of this homeland security, trying to figure out what would happen once you do something like this from the Oval Office.

So, unprepared.  And then I think, also, part of the problem was, they didn't understand what I say the unintended consequences of this, because the truth is that the countries that have been designated are now reacting, creating more problems for us, and then banning people — our people from going there.

For instance, in Iraq, how do we protect our troops?  What about the people that are interpreting?  And then I think all of it is based on untrue facts.  And so I think it is a very serious problem in terms of how the whole system works.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, let me take a couple of those, one at a time.

What they're saying is if — they're saying, if they had let the rest of the government know what they were doing, that it would have leaked, and they said there would have been a flood of people trying to get in.  And they also say that they're basically only following what the Obama administration had done a few years ago in listing countries that were the most for the United States to fear in terms of terrorism.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT:  Well, the latter is true.

What was happened was, there was an incident where something was coming out of Iraq.  They were concerned about what the facts really were.  They wanted to re-vet some people.  They didn't have enough manpower to do that, so things slowed down.

So there is nothing like that happened in the Obama administration.  I think the excuse about not letting others know, first of all, they need to understand that the government, in fact, when people trust each other, doesn't leak out when it's an important issue.

But how can you not let the departments that have something to do with executing the order not know?  Because I think that they were genuinely surprised by, you know how slow it was, what happened when they detained people, what happened then when there were demonstrations against it.

So I'm willing to say they were surprised at the reaction to it, but that's a sign of the fact they didn't understand what they were doing.

"Will the refugee ban reinforce political division?" PBS NewsHour 1/30/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Donald Trump had promised a crackdown on immigration on the campaign trail.  Now he's done it, following through with a ban on refugees that was popular with his supporters.  Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR, join Judy Woodruff to discuss the political effects of the President's executive order restricting immigration and more.

"How Trump's immigration ban is jeopardizing one Iraqi translator's future in America" PBS NewsHour 1/30/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  After seven years of working alongside the U.S. military, Abdul Hamid Abdul Ghani was set to move to live in the United States with his family next week.  Now President Donald Trump's executive order has left their future uncertain.  Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from Northern Iraq.

"The legal arguments for and against Trump's immigration ban" PBS NewsHour 1/31/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Lawsuits have challenged President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily prohibits immigrants and visitors from seven countries.  Jonathan Turley a law professor at George Washington University, and Neal Katyal former Acting Solicitor General under President Obama, join Miles O'Brien to discuss whether Trump's policy violates the law or [U.S.] Constitution.

THE RESISTANCE - Trump Agenda 02/01/2017

"Angela Merkel is now the leader of the free world, not Donald Trump" by Sunny Hundal, Independent 2/1/2017

When Barack Obama revealed that his last phone call as President was to Angela Merkel, reaffirming their alliance and friendship of the last eight years, he wasn't just saying goodbye.  He was handing over his baton.  The German Chancellor isn't just the leader of Europe, she is now the de-facto leader of the free world.

The thrice-elected, soft-spoken former scientist from East Germany, armed with a doctorate in quantum chemistry, doesn't just carry the weight of Germany and Europe on her shoulders, but that of defending freedom and liberalism across the world.

This is not an attempt to be provocative or exaggerate for effect.  Donald Trump cannot claim the mantle of “leading” the free world by default.  America's military might is not the only criteria necessary.

The title also requires the President to be committed to the values of liberal democracy.  But unlike his predecessors since the Second World War, it is already clear that Trump has no such inclinations.  He is heading, at terrifying speed, in the opposite direction.

Do I even have to make the case for this?  Since his inauguration Trump has undermined and ignored judges, even though an independent judiciary and a separation of powers is key to a democracy.

But the ban on immigrants highlighted something far more draconian.  If a President can abruptly restrict the rights of US residents without bothering with lawmakers or even government departments, he in effect an autocrat.  That is exactly what Trump did and will continue to do so.  His actions don't just undermine the rights of all Americans, they undermine the institutions that support American democracy.

Then there is Trump's assault on international trade and cooperation.  He is already threatening Mexico, China and now the EU.  Who will be next?  We can debate whether globalization benefits people equally, but only a fool would deny that international trade is a global good.  And it can only work if done on an equal, rules-based footing.  But Trump doesn't care for those, he is ripping up international agreements so he can bully smaller countries into submission.  That sets a dangerous precedent for the entire world.

And lastly there is the Trump administration's hostility towards the media.  Regardless of its bias, a thriving democracy needs a media willing to challenge the government.  Trump isn't just hostile to criticism, in his warped world it must be driven by lies and vindictiveness.  He is wracked by deep insecurity.  When his chief aide Steve Bannon says the media should “keep its mouth shut” – they mean it.  They don't want a free media criticizing them at all.  These are words that dictators use, not democrats.

The US President [Trump] isn't motivated by protecting liberal democracy or freedom, his sole ideology is Trumpism: corporate autocracy with a populist facade.  And he surrounds himself with white nationalists even more hostile to liberal democracy than he is.

Having grown up in communist East Germany before re-unification, Angela Merkel is the polar opposite.  She doesn't just recognize the sounds of autocracy, she chose to escape it.

This is why she has stood up to Trump's bullying and bigotry, saying on Monday that the “necessary battle against terrorism” did not justify putting “groups of certain people under general suspicion.”  The British government in sharp contrast has been slavish and spineless.

It's now abundantly clear that the free world needs a new leader.  With respect to Justin Trudeau, Canada simply isn't powerful enough.  It has to be Angela Merkel.

Her opponents know this, which is why the pro-Trump, pro-Putin, far-right forces are lining up against her.  We know this.  And she knows it.  It's time the most powerful woman in the world embraced her new role.  The world needs her.

"POLITICS Trump Just Removed White Supremacist Groups From Terror Watch Program" by Grant Stern, Occupy Democrats 2/2/2017

The Nazi Germany stench that surrounds Trump.

Reuters reports that the Trump regime is implementing a new change to America's domestic terrorism programs that will officially install religious profiling against Muslims and remove the dangerous white supremacist extremist groups who are responsible for much violence across the United States from the watch lists.

The program, “Countering Violent Extremism,” or CVE, would be changed to “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,” the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.

Just in the past two years, authorities blamed radical and violent ideologies as the motives for a white supremacist's shooting rampage inside a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina and Islamist militants for shootings and bombings in California, Florida and New York.

A reporter at ThinkProgress tweeted that eliminating the tracking of America's homegrown extremists like the Ku Klux Klan, certain far-right “patriot” groups and neo-Nazi groups will also eliminate the crucial tracking that the CVE program does to monitor the ranks of these hate-crime gangs and criminal enterprises.

THE ATLANTIC - Obama, Post-Presidency

"The life of an ex-President after leaving office" PBS NewsHour 1/24/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Can an ex-President have fun?  Atlantic writer Barbara Bradley Hagerty examined the lives of modern Presidents to see how they fared in the real world after leaving office in middle age.  As part of a collaboration with The Atlantic, Hagerty tells Judy Woodruff that Jimmy Carter was the trailblazer, Bill Clinton the moneymaker, George W. Bush the laid-back painter.  So what's next for Barack Obama?

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, The Atlantic:  Well, generally, Presidents — and let's refer throughout history — unless Presidents were wealthy, they generally had to work.

So, George Washington became the largest whiskey distiller.  And, you know, William Howard Taft became the Supreme Court chief justice.  So, they had to work.

But, more recently, what I was interested in seeing is that Presidents are living so long now.  And when a President leaves in midlife, at the peak of his game, what does he do then?  What does he do for an encore?

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  So, over time, the idea of what to do and the amount of time has changed.  Take us back to modern Presidents.  I mean, you looked at Jimmy Carter.

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY:  Jimmy Carter, he had a rough landing after his Presidency, which is not atypical.

So, Jimmy Carter loses to — in a landslide — to Ronald Reagan, and he comes home to Plains, Georgia, and there he finds that his business, his peanut business, is a million dollars in debt, that his house is in need of repair, and, literally, the forest has come right up to his back step, their back step.

And it was kind of this metaphor for Jimmy Carter's life.  How does he navigate through the thicket?  How does he have meaning in his life, after he was a one-term, relatively unpopular President?  And so that was his challenge.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And he was in his mid-50s.

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY:  He was.  He was 56.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, how did he go about figuring out what he would do?

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY:  When you look at Carter, what you saw was a man who was — his personality, he was very smart, very ambitious, and he had a kind of biblical ethos.

In fact, Walter Mondale told me that Jimmy Carter said, “You know, when this is all over, I want to be a missionary.”

So there's that.  And then there was his Presidency.  And what you saw in the Presidency, it was a rough Presidency, but he had this one defining area, right, Camp David, peace between Israel and Egypt.

THE RESISTANCE - Via In These Times

"HOW CORPORATE MEDIA THREATENS OUR DEMOCRACY" by Bernie Sanders, In These Times 1/26/2017

MEDIA SHAPES OUR VERY LIVES.  It tells us what products we need to buy and, by the quantity and nature of coverage, what is “important” and what is “unimportant.”  Media informs us as to the scope of what is “realistic” and “possible.”

When we see constant coverage of murders and brutality on television, corporate media is telling us that crime and violence are important issues that we should be concerned about.  When there is round-the-clock coverage of the Super Bowl, we are being informed that football and the NFL deserve our rapt attention.  When there is very little coverage of the suffering of the 43 million Americans living in poverty, or the thousands of Americans without health insurance who die each year because they can't get to a doctor when they should, corporately owned media is telling us that these are not issues of major concern.  For years, major crises like climate change, the impact of trade agreements on our economy, the role of big money in politics and youth unemployment have received scant media coverage.  Trade union leaders, environmentalists, low-income activists, people prepared to challenge the corporate ideology, rarely appear on our TV screens.

Media is not just about what is covered and how.  It is about what is not covered.  And those decisions, of what is and is not covered, are not made in the heavens.  They are made by human beings who often have major conflicts of interest.

As a general rule of thumb, the more important the issue is to large numbers of working people, the less interesting it is to corporate media.  The less significant it is to ordinary people, the more attention the media pays.  Further, issues being pushed by the top 1 percent get a lot of attention.  Issues advocated by representatives of working families, not so much.

For the corporate media, the real issues facing the American people— poverty, the decline of the middle class, income and wealth inequality, trade, healthcare, climate change, etc.—are fairly irrelevant.  For them, politics is largely presented as entertainment.  With some notable exceptions, reporters are trained to see a campaign as if it were a game show, a baseball game, a soap opera, or a series of conflicts.

I saw this time and time again.

Turn on CNN or other networks covering politics and what you will find is that the overwhelming amount of coverage is dedicated to personality, gossip, campaign strategy, scandals, conflicts, polls and who appears to be winning or losing, fundraising, the ups and downs of the campaign trail, and the dumb things a candidate may say or do.  It has very little to do with the needs of the American people and the ideas or programs a candidate offers to address the problems facing the country.

According to a study of media coverage of the 2016 primaries by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, only 11 percent of coverage focused on candidates' policy positions, leadership abilities and professional histories.  My personal sense is that number is much too high.

The “politics as entertainment” approach works very well for someone like Donald Trump, an experienced entertainer.  That kind of media approach didn't work so well for a campaign like ours, which was determined to focus on the real problems facing our country and what the solutions might be.  For the corporate media, name-calling and personal attacks are easy to cover, and what it prefers to cover.

While I was still considering whether or not to run, I did a long interview with a very prominent national newspaper writer.  Over and over I stressed that I wanted to talk about my assessment of the major problems facing the country, and how I proposed to address them.  And for 45 minutes, that's what the discussion was about.  The reporter appeared interested in what I had to say, and I thought we had a good conversation.  At the very end, as he was leaving, he said: “Oh, by the way, Hillary Clinton said such and such.  What's your comment?”  I fell for it.  Needless to say, that one-minute response became the major part of his story.  And that occurred time after time after time.

On a CNN show, an interviewer became visibly angry because I chose not to respond to her questions with personal attacks against Secretary Clinton.  The interviewer opined that I didn't have “sharp enough elbows” to become a serious candidate, that I wasn't tough enough.  Identifying the major problems facing our country, and providing ideas as to how we could address them, was just not good enough.

In fact, I was gently faulted by some for having excessive “message discipline,” for spending too much time discussing real issues.  Boring.  The result of all of these factors is that while I was getting coverage, it was far less than what other candidates were getting.

In a Dec.  11, 2015, blog post for Media Matters for America, Eric Boehlert wrote:

ABC World News Tonight has de voted less than one minute to Bernie Sanders' campaign this year.

In his article, Boehlert also reported that:

Trump has received more network coverage than all the Democratic candidates combined.  ?

Republican Jeb Bush received 56 minutes of coverage.

"With Donald Trump as President, Americans Are Flocking to Socialism" by Kate Aronoff, In These Times 1/23/2017

One evening the week before Christmas, about 100 people squeezed into a room in the Brooklyn Free School, located on one of central Brooklyn's posher streets.  The private school's chair collection exhausted itself within minutes as attendees packed the room for the monthly meeting of the Brooklyn chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—which, just a month earlier, had fit easily into the same space.

Since Nov 8, 2016, thousands have joined DSA.  The organization has ballooned to over 14,000 members, more than doubling in size from 6,500 members in May 2016.  DSA National Director Maria Svart says of new sign-ups, “You could literally see the moment when Trump was declared the winner.”

Organizations such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are reporting a similar spike in new members and donations in the wake of Trump's election.  But interest in socialist groups, grown accustomed to being small and isolated in U.S. politics, appears to be surging in a way it hasn't in decades.  Many of those joining are young people who don't have their parents' Cold War hangups about socialism.  Politicians like Bernie Sanders—an avowed socialist whom many supporters are looking to for an effective counter to Trump—have further sparked their interest in a politics outside mainstream Democrats and Republicans.

That puts DSA in a promising, if uncertain, position in the wake of Trump's election.  “People … are looking to DSA as an organization that full throatedly supported Bernie Sanders in the primary and has the potential to be a serious part of the fightback, both to Trump and to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party,” says Svart.

Founded in 1982 out of the remnants of the '60s New Left, DSA also has roots in Eugene Debs' Socialist Party of America, which at its height in 1912 boasted 113,000 dues-paying members.  Eager to avoid the pitfalls of insular ideological squabbles, DSA strives to work with community organizations and social movements.  Following the election, DSA chapters have mobilized to support organizing by communities threatened by Trump and his supporters, including local mosques and immigrant rights organizations.  DSA is also working on building a multiracial membership—its current members are predominantly white—while supporting existing organizing by communities of color.  Brooklyn DSA's Racial Justice working group, for example, is partnering with the New York-based group Communities United for Police Reform to help pass the Right to Know Act, aimed at increasing transparency and accountability on the part of the NYPD.

Ultimately, says Svart, there's agreement within the organization about “the need for a multi-racial, anti-capitalist movement that is in touch with the grassroots.”

For now, DSA is proving an on-ramp for those frustrated with Trump and the Democratic establishment alike.  The Brooklyn meeting on Dec 22, 2016, was the first for Hannah Silverman, a New York native who worked on local Democratic campaigns in high school but grew disillusioned with politics before heading off to Brown University, where she graduated in 2015.

“I was afraid [the meeting] would feel futile,” she said as chairs were being collected toward the end.  Instead, she was pleasantly surprised by the tailored facilitation—after a discussion of the importance of organizing “openly as socialists” at the local level, the meeting broke out into smaller committees on everything from affordable housing fights to climate justice—and the high attendance.  “Looking at Trump's election, the only way to spin it positively is that it compelled a lot of people to become politically active,” she noted.  “It created a sense of urgency that was missing.”  She plans to attend next month's meeting.  In New York City alone, DSA now has 1,000 members.

But deep-blue Brooklyn isn't the only place where democratic socialism is undergoing a resurgence.  Local organizers are in the process of getting six new chapters off the ground in Florida and four in Ohio, both of which went for Trump in November.  DSA's tiny national staff, funded entirely by dues and small donations, has been overwhelmed by requests to create new chapters around the country and is looking for ways to expand accordingly.

Tom Tilden, 59, is among those DSA members setting up shop for socialism deep in Trump country.  Tilden is a DSA veteran, having joined when he lived in Chicago in the late '80s.  But when he moved to Nebraska in 1993, Tilden says, he didn't consider starting a new chapter there, though he remained a member of the national organization.  When people talk about “the Left” in conservative Nebraska, Tilden explains, they're referring to “people in the middle of the Democratic Party leftward.  ‘The Left' is progressive.  People don't usually think in terms of socialist.”

But that may be changing after Sanders' primary run, which “changed the nature of the Democratic Party in the state” while stripping away some of the taboos that plague socialist politics, says Tilden.  In Nebraska's March 2016 caucus, Clinton won just 10 of the state's pledged delegates to Sanders' 15, and he successfully won over some of the state's most rural counties.  Since the caucuses, Tilden has been working to get a new chapter off the ground in Omaha, and another has sprung up in nearby Lincoln.  About 30 people attended the first meeting in December 2016.

Like many other DSA members around the country, Tilden sees potential in building institutions outside the Democratic Party, but is also a firm believer in trying to stage a takeover from the inside.  This fall, he joined Keystone XL pipeline opponent Jane Kleeb on the ticket to run Nebraska's Democratic Party.  She's now the party's state chair.  Tilden is second associate chair, and has similar goals for his work in this position as he does as a local DSA organizer; Reaching working-class voters, especially those who went for Trump but might yet be won over to the kind of anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement that DSA hopes to build.

“People in rural Nebraska are more progressive than they realize,” Tilden reasons.  While door-knocking during the Sanders campaign, he and other volunteers found that many rural voters took firm stands against corporate agriculture and attacks on public education.  “I think once we work with them on their issue, they'll see that the people on their side are not the Republicans.”

Instead, Tilden hopes, they just might embrace an entirely different shade of red.