AMERICA - What Other Countries See

TRUMP - In Nashville

"In Nashville, Trump bent and broke the truth.  Here are the facts" PBS NewsHour 5/30/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Wednesday on the PBS NewsHour, Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to fact-check some of President Trump’s claims.

President Donald Trump made several misleading statements Tuesday during an hour-long campaign-style speech in Nashville.  Trump traveled to Tennessee in part to boost the Senate candidacy of Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn).

But Trump’s support for Blackburn, who is running to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn) was largely overshadowed by criticism that he exaggerated his record in office.  Here’s a look at four misleading or outright false assertions Trump made in his speech.

"How businessman Trump turned exaggeration into his brand" PBS NewsHour 5/30/2018

IMHO:  In Trump World, the only fact is HE LIES.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump has been called out before for not sticking to the facts.  Gwenda Blair, author of "The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President," joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his lifelong predilection for “truthful hyperbole.”

BLACK TUESDAY - Trump Cleans House

"After months of tension, Tillerson's State Department tenure comes to abrupt end" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2018

"Abrupt" is an understatement.  Tillerson gets notification via Tweet and word of mouth AFTER being fired.  Forget being respectful of the office or being courteous.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Rex Tillerson was sacked Tuesday after 14 months of rocky relations and a long list of policy disputes with President Trump, who announced the Secretary of State's firing in a tweet.  Judy Woodruff looks back at the many points of contention between Tillerson and Trump, and the circumstances potential successor Mike Pompeo would face at 'Foggy Bottom.'

"Tillerson is one of a wave of departures.  Why is Trump cleaning house?" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2018

Answer, YES.  He's attempting to do the same in the FBI.  Trump wants ONLY people who will massage his ego and kiss his 'ring.'

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What led President Trump to shake up his national security team and dismiss Secretary of State Rex Tillerson?  Judy Woodruff gets insights into the firing from Robert Costa of the Washington Post and Josh Lederman of the Associated Press.

"Will Mike Pompeo succeed where Rex Tillerson failed?" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2018

aka "Will Mike Pompeo bow down to Putin and kiss Putin's ring?"

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What was Rex Tillerson’s impact on the State Department and American diplomacy, and what will global ripple effects will his successor, current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, face?  Judy Woodruff gets reaction and analysis from Nicholas Burns former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, David Ignatius from The Washington Post, and David Shedd former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "You Can't Spell America Without Me"

"When Alec Baldwin plays the president, Trump 'is the head writer'" PBS NewsHour 11/9/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Alec Baldwin first played then-candidate Donald Trump in October 2016 and assumed the parody would last until the election, but the actor continues to be a recurring guest on Saturday Night Live and an outspoken critic of the President.  Baldwin sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss his book, “You Can't Spell America Without Me,” a memoir in which he takes on Trump's voice in a different way.

Jeffrey Brown (NewsHour):  You’re not shy about your own politics.  You’re sort on of the opposite of him on almost every issue.  So should we see this as kind of a political act?

Alec Baldwin, actor:  That’s a fair point, if we were doing a lot of writing.

Trump is the head writer of “SNL” himself.  Nearly 90…

Jeffrey Brown:  In what sense?

Alec Baldwin:  Well, nearly 90 percent of what we say and do are verbatim transcriptions of what Trump has said.  We don’t really have to go very far to find the material.  Trump himself is just spewing it out on a daily basis or a weekly basis.

So it’s not about politics meaning I’m misstating or misquoting things that he said and did.  That’s one of the jokes we told is that Trump would say how he hates the media, and he hates NBC and he hates “SNL,” because I say things, and they repeat it right back to the public, he would say.  They repeat all the things I say.

Of course he’s tormented by the fact that we repeat all the things that he says.

DIVIDED AMERICA - Trump Supporters

The poor misguided fools.

"What it's like to be a Trump supporter in an ultra-liberal city" PBS NewsHour 7/26/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What is it like to be a conservative woman trying to find your voice in a city known for its progressive politics?  The NewsHour's Elizabeth Flock wrote an in-depth profile of Trump supporters living in Portland, Oregon, the second half of our series on political divisions in unlikely places.  Flock joins Judy Woodruff to take a closer look.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Opinion, Trump Supporters

"There's No Denying How Trump Supporters Will Be Remembered in our History Books" by Allen Clifton, Forward Progressives 5/14/2017

Before the election, I wrote an article that touched on some of the same points I'm going to talk about here.  However, I felt as if it needed a bit of a “refresh,” of sorts, based on the absolute chaos we've seen since Donald Trump was sworn into office on January 20, 2017.

The words I used at the beginning of that article ring as true now as they did when I first wrote them:

There's not even a shred of sane or rational logic anyone can use to defend Donald Trump.

Say what you want about him, and there's plenty to say, but Trump knew what he was talking about when, over a year ago, he said his supporters were mindless sheep who'll support him no matter what.

Sure, his approval numbers have hit historic lows, and most of the country thinks he's doing a piss-poor job as “Commander-in-Chief,” but the overwhelming majority of Republicans still fully support him.

As I've said before, I don't think most of his supporters care if he did collude with Russia during the election.  He could admit he worked with Putin to undermine the integrity of our democracy and the vast majority of Republicans would still probably support him.

His supporters can't even defend his campaign promises anymore considering we now know they were total bullshit.  Mexico's not paying for his border wall, he's not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and the health care plan he supports isn't anything that he said it would be prior to getting “elected.”

And just like I wrote several months ago, at this point, if you're still a supporter of Donald Trump, here's what you really are: You're someone who's cemented your place in history as an individual who we're all going to look back upon with disgust and shame because you were ignorant enough to support the most corrupt, dishonest, vile, and incompetent “President” in United States history.

This is a man who's:

• Mocked a man with disabilities.
• Attacked the parents of a fallen American hero.
• Belittled POWs and the war record of Sen.  John McCain.
• Lied about how much money he raised for veterans.
• Called a former Miss Universe “disgusting” and fat, telling his Twitter followers to find her non-existent sex tape.
• Accused an American-born federal judge of being unfit to do his job because of his Mexican heritage.
• Likely avoided paying taxes for nearly two decades.
• Called most Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, even though that's not remotely factual.
• Lied about seeing “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11.
• Lied about getting a letter from the NFL complaining about the debate schedule.
• Tried to exploit the death of an African American woman in Chicago to say that's why black voters will support him.
• Found the “bright side” to tragedies because his poll numbers tend to go up.
• Settled with the Department of Justice after his company was found guilty of racially discriminating against minorities.
• Has cheated on at least one wife.
• Was discovered on video admitting that he not only tried to cheat on his current wife, but he attempted to do so with another married woman.
• Had his first wife publicly say that he did nothing when it came to raising their children until they were old enough to talk business.
• Tweeted that women should have expected to be sexually assaulted when they mixed males and females together in the military.
• Said he wants to target the families of terrorists.
• Stated that he wants to ban an entire religion.
• Praised a Russian President who obviously hates the U.S. and Americans.
• Encouraged the Russian government to commit espionage against Americans.
• Insinuated that another Republican's wife was ugly.
• Tried to implicate another Republican's father in JFK's assassination.
• Sought out the help of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes after he was fired following multiple allegations that he had sexually harassed women for years.
• Made Breitbart's Steve Bannon one of his top campaign people.
• Had a former campaign manager abruptly resign after a report came out linking him to pro-Russian groups that were directly trying to undermine U.S. policy in eastern Europe.
• Called Carly Fiorina ugly.
• Has said climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese — then denied saying it.
• Was a leading conspiracy theorist when it came to the racist-driven birther conspiracies against President Obama.
• Dismissed nearly eight years of accusing the President of not being an American with a less than 30 second statement where he didn't apologize for any of it.
• Tried to blame Hillary Clinton for his racism.
• Re-tweeted anti-African American propaganda created by a white supremacy group.
• Played dumb about knowing who former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke was.
• Skipped a Presidential debate because he was scared of a moderator.
• Has, on several occasions, suggested he finds his daughter attractive.
• Called a husband doing things like changing diapers and helping with the children, a man “trying to be the wife.”
• Has said he wants more countries to have nuclear weapons.
• Said he can't release his tax returns because they're currently being audited — even though the IRS said that's a lie.
• Feels he has the right to sexually assault women.
• Lied, in the face of indisputable photographic evidence, about the size of his inauguration crowd.
• Continues to push the unfounded conspiracy that “millions of people voted illegally” because his ego can't handle the fact Clinton received 3 million more votes than he did.
• Disgraced the CIA's monument to fallen agents by talking about his electoral college victory.
• After frequently criticizing President Obama for playing golf, has spent nearly half his weekends since being sworn into office playing golf at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
• On pace to cost taxpayers more on “extracurricular” expenses during his first 365 days in office than we spent on Obama during his 2,921 days as President.
• Settled a $25 million lawsuit accusing him of purposely creating a fake university to scam people out of money.
• Has already broken most of his biggest campaign promises.
• Fired the head of the FBI for apparently not “swearing loyalty” and doing what he wanted in regards to the on-going investigations looking into his campaign's ties to Russians.
• Then threatened the former head of the FBI just after firing him in an attempt to intimidate him from speaking out publicly.
• Pushed an unfounded conspiracy against Barack Obama, accusing him of ordering unconstitutional wiretaps placed in Trump Tower — without providing a shred of evidence to back it up.
• Seems to have been working with the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep.  Devin Nunes, to undermine congressional investigations into his possible Russian connections.
• Had said, despite promising to do so, he doesn't plan to ever release his tax returns.
• Said he didn't know being “President” would be so hard.
• Apparently needed the President of China to explain to him why dealing with North Korea is complicated.
• Signed two travel bans against Muslims that were overturned as unconstitutional.
• Allowed state-run Russian media to bring electronic and photographic equipment into the Oval Office — while denying entry to any U.S. press — at the request of Vladimir Putin.
• Said his surrogates shouldn't be held accountable for the dishonest or contradictory things they say.
• Admitted Australia, which has universal health care, has better health care than we do, then doubled-down on those comments, yet still supports a bill that's almost the complete opposite of their system.
• Months after the election, continues to bring it up the electoral college, even hanging a large printout of it on a wall in the White House.
• Didn't mention the Jewish people once during his speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
• Blamed Democrats for the initial failure of the House of Representatives being able to pass Trumpcare — even though Republicans have a 44-seat majority.
• Is now bragging about the very same jobs reports he called “fake” and “phony” prior to taking office.
• Continues to call the talk about the investigations into his connections to Russia “FAKE NEWS!” even though the FBI has publicly admitted these investigations are, in fact, real.
• Has the lowest approval rating for a President this early into their presidency — in history.
• Admitted he lied when he publicly threatened that he might have recorded his conversations with the former head of the FBI he had just fired — in a clear attempt to intimidate James Comey into not speaking out about what the two men had discussed.
• Apparently doesn't understand what “collusion” or “obstruction” actually mean.
• Called the very same health care plan he publicly celebrated and said he supports “mean.”
• Launched a disgusting attack against “low I.Q” MSNBC's Mika Brzeninski, accusing her of “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when he saw her back in January, while calling her co-host Joe Scarborough, and former U.S. congressman, “psycho.”

One man has done all of that, and much more.

I'm no mental health expert and I'm not involved in the medical field at all.  But based on what I've read and can plainly see about Donald Trump, he exhibits nearly every characteristic linked to a sociopath.  He:

• Doesn't believe the rules or laws apply to him.
• Seems to have no concern about the consequences of his actions.
• Is impulsive.
• Shows frequent signs of being reckless.
• Is unpredictable.
• Lacks morals.
• Is a narcissist.
• Has proven to be hot-tempered and a bit of a loose cannon.
• Lacks empathy or sympathy for others.
• Is manipulative to get what he wants.
• Almost never apologizes.
• Often invents outrageous lies about his success or experiences.
• Seems to believe that what he says is the truth, even if it isn't.

He is essentially the textbook definition of a sociopath.  However, despite the fact that he exhibits all of these signs without shame, millions of people support him.

Again, I'm not a mental health professional, but I don't think you need to be one to see that there's clearly something not right with Trump.  This type of unhinged behavior is not normal.

So, at this point, after all that Donald Trump has said and done and factoring in the campaign promises he's already broken, if you still support him, you've done nothing more than carved out your spot as someone we will all look back upon with disgust and humiliation that there were so many people like you who eagerly supported one of the most shameful embarrassments in United States history.

POLITICS - One Sided Constituent Dialog

"Trump's Not the Only One Blocking Constituents on Twitter" by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica 6/7/2015

As elected officials increasingly turn to social media to communicate with constituents, some are blocking those who disagree with them.  Some say it violates the First Amendment.  Legislators say it's about promoting a “healthy, civil dialogue.”  Expect court battles ahead.

This story was co-published with Slate.

As President Donald Trump faces criticism for blocking users on his Twitter account, people across the country say they, too, have been cut off by elected officials at all levels of government after voicing dissent on social media.

In Arizona, a disabled Army veteran grew so angry when her congressman blocked her and others from posting dissenting views on his Facebook page that she began delivering actual blocks to his office.

A central Texas congressman has barred so many constituents on Twitter that a local activist group has begun selling T-shirts complaining about it.

And in Kentucky, the Democratic Party is using a hashtag, #BevinBlocked, to track those who've been blocked on social media by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.  (Most of the officials blocking constituents appear to be Republican.)

The growing combat over social media is igniting a new-age legal debate over whether losing this form of access to public officials violates constituents' First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  Those who've been blocked say it's akin to being thrown out of a town hall meeting for holding up a protest sign.

On Tuesday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University called upon Trump to unblock people who've disagreed with him or directed criticism at him or his family via the @realdonaldtrump account, which he used prior to becoming President and continues to use as his principal Twitter outlet.

“Though the architects of the Constitution surely didn't contemplate presidential Twitter accounts, they understood that the President must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable,” Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute's executive director, said in a statement.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Press Secretary Sean Spicer said earlier Tuesday that statements the President makes on Twitter should be regarded as official statements.

Similar flare-ups have been playing out in state after state.

Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland called on Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, to stop deleting critical comments and barring people from commenting on his Facebook page.  (The Washington Post reported that the governor had blocked 450 people as of February.)

Deborah Jeon, the ACLU's legal director, said Hogan and other elected officials are increasingly foregoing town hall meetings and instead relying on social media as their primary means of communication with constituents.  “That's why it's so problematic,” she said.  “If people are silenced in that medium,” they can't effectively interact with their elected representative.

The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment this week.  After the letter, however, it reinstated six of the seven people specifically identified by the ACLU (it said it couldn't find the seventh).  “While the ACLU should be focusing on much more important activities than monitoring the governor's Facebook page, we appreciated them identifying a handful of individuals — out of the over 1?million weekly viewers of the page — that may have been inadvertently denied access,” a spokeswoman for the governor told the Post.

Practically speaking, being blocked cuts off constituents from many forms of interacting with public officials.  On Facebook, it means no posts, no likes and no questions or comments during live events on the page of the blocker.  Even older posts that may not be offensive are taken down.  On Twitter, being blocked prevents a user from seeing the other person's tweets on his or her timeline.

Moreover, while Twitter and Facebook themselves usually suspend account holders only temporarily for breaking rules, many elected officials don't have established policies for constituents who want to be reinstated.  Sometimes a call is enough to reverse it, other times it's not.

Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at the UCLA School of Law, said that for municipalities and public agencies, such as police departments, social media accounts would generally be considered “limited public forums” and therefore, should be open to all.

“Once they open it up to public comments, they can't then impose viewpoint-based restrictions on it,” he said, for instance allowing only supportive comments while deleting critical ones.

But legislators are different because they are people.  Elected officials can have personal accounts, campaign accounts and officeholder accounts that may appear quite similar.  On their personal and campaign accounts, there's little disagreement that officials can engage with — or block — whoever they want.  Last month, for instance, ProPublica reported how Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., blocked users on his campaign account after they criticized his positions on health reform and other issues.

But what about their officeholder social media accounts?

The ACLU's Jeon says that they should be public if they use government resources, including staff time and office equipment to maintain the page.  “Where that's the situation and taxpayer resources are going to it, then the full power of the First Amendment applies,” she said.  “It doesn't matter if they're members of Congress or the governor or a local councilperson.”

Volokh of UCLA disagreed.  He said that members of Congress are entitled to their own private speech, even on official pages.  That's because each is one voice among many, as opposed to a governor or mayor.  “It's clear that whatever my Senator is, she's not the government.  She is one person who is part of a legislative body,” he said.  “She was elected because she has her own views and it makes sense that if she has a Twitter feed or a Facebook page, that may well be seen as not government speech but the voice of somebody who may be a government official.”

Volokh said he's inclined to see Trump's @realdonaldtrump account as a personal one, though other legal experts disagree.

“You could imagine actually some other president running this kind of account in a way that's very public minded — 'I'm just going to express the views of the executive branch,'” he said.  “The @realdonaldtrump account is very much, 'I'm Donald Trump.  I'm going to be expressing my views, and if you don't like it, too bad for you.'  That sounds like private speech, even done by a government official on government property.”

It's possible the fight over the President's Twitter account will end up in court, as such disputes have across the country.  Generally, in these situations, the people contesting the government's social media policies have reached settlements ending the questionable practices.

After being sued by the ACLU, three cities in Indiana agreed last year to change their policies by no longer blocking users or deleting comments.

In 2014, a federal judge ordered the City and County of Honolulu to pay $31,000 in attorney's fees to people who sued, contending that the Honolulu Police Department violated their constitutional rights by deleting their critical Facebook posts.

And San Diego County agreed to pay the attorney's fees of a gun parts dealer who sued after its Sheriff's Department deleted two Facebook posts that were critical of the sheriff and banned the dealer from commenting.  The department took down its Facebook page after being sued and paid the dealer $20 as part of the settlement.

Angela Greben, a California paralegal, has spent the past two years gathering information about agencies and politicians that have blocked people on social media — Democrats and Republican alike — filing ethics complaints and even a lawsuit against the city of San Mateo, California, its mayor and police department.  (They settled with her, giving her some of what she wanted.)

Greben has filed numerous public-records requests to agencies as varied as the Transportation Security Administration, the Seattle Police Department and the Connecticut Lottery seeking lists of people they block.  She's posted the results online.

“It shouldn't be up to the elected official to decide who can tweet them and who can't,” she said.  “Everybody deserves to be treated equally and fairly under the law.”

Even though she lives in California, Greben recently filed an ethics complaint against Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat, who has been criticized for blocking not only constituents but also journalists who cover him.  Reed has blocked Greben since 2015 when she tweeted about him … well, blocking people on Twitter.  “He's notorious for blocking and muting people,” she said, meaning he can't see their tweets but they can still see his.

In a statement, a city spokeswoman defended the mayor, saying he's now among the top five most-followed mayors in the country.  “Mayor Reed uses social media as a personal platform to engage directly with constituents and some journalists.  … Like all Twitter users, Mayor Reed has the right to stop engaging in conversations when he determines they are unproductive, intentionally inflammatory, dishonest and/or misleading.”

Asked how many people he has blocked, she replied that the office doesn't keep such a list.

J'aime Morgaine, the Arizona veteran who delivered blocks to the office of Rep.  Paul Gosar, a Republican, said being blocked on Facebook matters because her representative no longer hosts in-person town hall meetings and has started to answer questions on Facebook Live.  Now she can't ask questions or leave comments.

“I have lost and other people who have been blocked have lost our right to participate in the democratic process,” said Morgaine, leader of Indivisible Kingman, a group that opposes the president's agenda.  “I am outraged that my congressman is blocking my voice and trampling upon my constitutional rights.”

Morgaine said the rules are not being applied equally.  “They're not blocking everybody who's angry,” she said.  “They're blocking the voices of dissent, and there's no process for getting unblocked.  There's no appeals process.  There's no accountability.”

A spokeswoman for Gosar defended his decision to block constituents but did not answer a question about how many have been blocked.

“Congressman Gosar's policy has been consistent since taking office in January 2010,” spokeswoman Kelly Roberson said in an email.  “In short: 'Users whose comments or posts consist of profanity, hate speech, personal attacks, homophobia or Islamophobia may be banned.'”

On his Facebook page, Gosar posts the policy that guides his actions.  It says in part, “Users are banned to promote healthy, civil dialogue on this page but are welcome to contact Congressman Gosar using other methods,” including phone calls, emails and letters.

Sometimes, users are blocked repeatedly.

Community volunteer Gayle Lacy was named 2015 Wacoan of the Year for her effort to have the site of mammoth fossils in Waco, Texas, designated a national monument.  Lacy's latest fight has been with her congressman, Bill Flores, who was with her in the Oval Office when Obama designated the site a national monument in 2015.  She has been blocked three times by Flores' congressional Twitter account and once by his campaign account.  One of those blocks happened after she tweeted at him: “My father died in service for this country, but you are not representative of that country and neither is your dear leader.”

Lacy said she was able to get unblocked each time from Flores' congressional account by calling his office but remains blocked on the campaign one.  “I don't know where to call,” she said.  “I asked in his D.C. office who I needed to call and I was told that they don't have that information.”

Lacy and others said Flores blocks those who question him.  Austin lawyer Matt Miller said he was blocked for asking when Flores would hold a town hall meeting.  “It's totally inappropriate to block somebody, especially for asking a legitimate question of my elected representative,” Miller said.

In a statement, Flores spokesman Andre Castro said Flores makes his policies clear on Twitter and on Facebook.  “We reserve the right to block users whose comments include profanity, name-calling, threats, personal attacks, constant harping, inappropriate or false accusations, or other inappropriate comments or material.  As the Congressman likes to say — 'If you would not say it to your grandmother, we will not allow it here.'”

Ricardo Guerrero, an Austin marketer who is one of the leaders of a local group opposed to Trump's agenda, said he has gotten unblocked by Flores twice but then was blocked again and “just kind of gave up.”

“He's creating an echo chamber of only the people that agree with him,” Guerrero said of Flores.  “He's purposefully removing any semblance of debate or alternative ideas or ideas that challenge his own — and that seems completely undemocratic.  That's the bigger issue in my mind.”

JOURNALISM - In the Age of Trump

"How We're Learning To Do Journalism Differently in the Age of Trump" by Eric Umansky, ProPublica 5/8/2017

This story was co-published with IRE Journal.

It's a great time to be an investigative journalist.  Sure, no President has done more to demonize media than President Trump.  But nor has anybody done more to boost our standing than Trump.

Millions of Americans have put their faith in us.  A few weeks after the election, a friend of mine, pondering the reality of one-party government in Washington, looked at me soberly and summed up her sentiment:  “You are our Congress now.”

What she meant, of course, was that we need to keep doing our job, to ferret out facts and expose wrongdoing.  It seemed straightforward enough.

But as my friend was talking, one thought kept running over and over in my mind: How the hell are we going to do this?

At ProPublica, our stories often take months, and occasionally longer than that.  How could we cover something as fast moving as a new administration?  We also tend to stay away from areas other reporters are already covering.  If lots of reporters are already digging into something, why would we want to as well?  One of our advantages is that we don't have to be comprehensive.  We can and should skip stories where we're unlikely to distinguish ourselves.

We could have made the decision to stick with those inclinations ­— to veer away from the pack and focus on areas where others were now even less likely to be.

But we didn't do that.

Instead, on Inauguration Day, we announced what we would be covering ­— many, many areas related to the new administration.  The same day, we reported Trump hadn't fulfilled his promise to hand over control of his businesses.  Two weeks later, we reported that Trump's daughter Ivanka had failed to do the same.

And our stories kept coming: about how Trump was hiring lobbyists to work at agencies they once lobbied, about the hundreds of officials Trump had quietly installed across the government, and about a Trump trust document that states the president can pull money from his businesses any time he wants.  (It's that last story that got the White House riled up and led Sean Spicer, to blessedly, label us a “left-wing blog.”)

We're still in flux.  We definitely don't have all the answers.  Like many newsrooms, we're still grappling with how to handle coverage of the new administration.  But we have found a few principles to be helpful.

Worry Less About Zigging When Others Zag

Rather than tacking away from important topics that already have the country's attention, sometimes it makes sense to look for opportunities within them.

Take the work last year of the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold, who, of course, could serve as an example in any number of these tips.  Countless journalists were covering Trump's campaign.  The size of the scrum covering his candidacy probably set a record.  But how many reporters were really digging into Trump's charity?  It turned out none, until Fahrenthold.

That's obviously not an easy example to replicate.  In fact, Fahrenthold has written about how he didn't know what he was launching himself into.

That doesn't mean you should chase the week's news, or worry about matching what other outlets are doing.  What it means is deciding you're going to go after the most important and vital topics, and then giving yourself the task of producing revelatory coverage within them.

A hypothetical I've occasionally invoked: Imagine you had been a reporter during the civil rights era and were looking back at your career decades later.  What would you have hoped to cover?  (I've heard BuzzFeed's Ben Smith tell his staff something quite similar: Write now what you think you'll be proud of at the end of your career.)

Stop Hoarding and Start Sharing

ProPublica has been collaborating with other newsrooms since we started nine years ago.  But over the past few months, we've landed on new ways of working with others.

On a Friday night in late March, the White House announced it was making many staffers' financial disclosure forms “available.”  But it didn't post them online or even disclose which staffers had filed the forms.

To get the documents, reporters first had to guess who had filed the disclosures.  Then, they had to fill out a form on the White House's website for each person.  It was like dealing with the world's worst customer service department ­— only we were trying to wrangle purportedly public information.

Then, one of our editors, Tracy Weber, had an idea: Why not call our friends at other outlets and coordinate.  Within minutes, The New York Times and Associated Press had agreed to work with us and post all the documents we gathered.

In another instance, we talked with the Times' Eric Lipton about our joint interest in documenting the legion of lobbyists joining the administration.  The chat led to a very simple and quick collaboration: We shared data on administration hires with the Times, which used it to publish a hard-hitting story that cited our contribution.

It was just one example of many where even the simple act of comparing notes has paid off.  That's clearly not the proper approach all the time.  But it can be plenty of the time.

Do It Out In the Open

For years, we've reached out to readers to fuel our journalism.  But we've been much more aggressive about it recently.

One thing has been to simply say what we're working on — even if it's just broadly.  On Inauguration Day, we not only laid out our areas of coverage, but we also gave contact information for each of our reporters.  And at the bottom of many of our stories now is a reporter's contact info, and, crucially, an explanation of what information they're seeking.

Do you have information about the Trump administration's beachhead teams and their role at federal agencies?  Contact Justin at justin@ProPublica.org or via Signal at 774-826-6240.  Here is a guide for how to leak to ProPublica.

It's not fancy, but it's effective.

Sometimes readers don't have insider tips, but they can still contribute.  In February, a reader wrote us about a letter she received from Missouri Sen.  Roy Blunt criticizing Obamacare.  The letter was filled with misleading formation.  We wondered if that was true of other congressional letters, so Charles Ornstein and Terry Parris Jr.  asked readers to share any similar letters they'd gotten.  Again, we coordinated to get the word out with other outlets: Vox, Kaiser Health News and STAT News.  Readers sent in hundreds of letters.  The result: We were able to lay out how legislators were sending their constituents correspondence “full of lies and misinformation.”

Others are also embracing the approach, and getting results: Last month, the Trump administration disclosed donors who funded the president's $100 million inauguration committee.  The administration posted them as super-unhelpful, non-searchable PDFs.  So reporters got together to fix that, turning the documents into data.  Then, the Huffington Post's Christina Wilkie invited readers to dig in and background the donors.  It turns out, some of the names were straight-up fake.

You Won't Be Able to Neatly Plan and Package Your Stories — and That's Okay

Just about the only certainty with this administration is that nobody knows what will happen.  That means if you're going to cover one of the most consequential stories of our time, you're probably not going to be able to, say, carefully plot out a year's worth of stories in advance.

But that doesn't mean just writing what's in front of you, either.  In fact, it's more crucial than ever to think carefully about which waters to swim in.  You just may need to be at peace with the uncertainty about where exactly your coverage is heading.  You may even have some false starts.  And there's no guarantee it will work at all.

Success will require the typical alchemy needed for great journalism ­— doggedness, imagination, and luck.  It will also require a leap of faith.  Making that leap seems only fair given the faith that readers have put in us.

INTERVIEW - U.N. Secretary-General Guterres

"U.N. Secretary-General Guterres:  The world needs a U.S. that is engaged" PBS NewsHour 4/21/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In his first American television interview since becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss why the world needs a United States that is engaged in issues of security, development and human rights, plus opportunities for reforming the U.N., the importance of protecting refugees, the struggle to end the bloodshed in Syria and more.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "A World in Disarray"

"How a former diplomat makes sense of ‘A World in Disarray’" PBS NewsHour 4/17/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the new book "A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order," a former American diplomat takes a candid look at the state of international affairs.  Margaret Warner talks to Richard Haass about what’s happened to the world since the end of the Cold War, and the challenges facing President Trump now.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 4/14/2017

"Shields and Brooks on GOP home-district hostility, Trump policy reversals" PBS NewsHour 4/14/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including how Republican members of Congress are facing heat from crowds of their own constituents while home during recess, why President Trump's views have shifted on China, NATO, and Janet Yellen, and more.

TRUMP WORLD - The View of the Generalissimo

Fist of all, don't be fooled.  Trump IS and always will be Trump-first.

"Have crises abroad changed President Trump's view of the world?" PBS NewsHour 4/13/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  What began as a Trump presidency emphasizing retrenchment on the home front has been quickly refocused on the U.S. role abroad.  The U.S. response to Syria's use of chemical weapons have raised fresh questions about President Trump's foreign policy.  Judy Woodruff talks to former Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns and Adm. James Stavridis former NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  He bills himself the 'America-First President,' but it's world affairs that have risen to the top of his agenda lately.  Syria's use of chemical weapons, the U.S. response, and President Trump's own words have raised fresh questions about his foreign policy.