CUBAN IMMIGRANT - At the White House

A FRIGHTENED LITTLE MAN - Trump Tear-Gas Protesters

"Inside the push to tear-gas protesters ahead of a Trump photo op" by Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Rebecca Tan - The Washington Post 6/1/2020

President Trump began mulling a visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday morning, after spending the night devouring cable news coverage of protests across the country, including in front of the White House.

The historic church had been damaged by fire, and Trump was eager to show that the nation’s capital — and especially his own downtown swath of it — was under control.

There was just one problem: the throngs of protesters, who on Monday had again assembled peacefully in Lafayette Square across from the White House to protest the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.

And so — shortly before the President addressed the nation from the Rose Garden at 6:43 p.m. Monday and roughly a half-hour before the District’s 7 p.m. curfew went into effect — authorities fired flash-bang shells, gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, clearing a path for Trump to visit the church immediately after his remarks.

The split screen as Trump began speaking was dark and foreboding — an angry leader proclaiming himself “an ally of all peaceful protesters” alongside smoke-filled mayhem and pandemonium as protesters raced for safety.

Before Trump vows to end ‘lawlessness,’ federal officers confront protesters outside White House.

The evening’s events were the product of a President who favors brute strength and fears looking weak, yet finds himself reeling from a duo of crises — a deadly pandemic that has left more than 100,000 Americans dead and racial unrest that has led to protests and riots across the nation.

He has also been consumed by his faltering poll numbers against former vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President.

When Trump had returned safely to the White House less than an hour later, the verdict seemed clear: The President had staged an elaborate photo op, using a Bible awkwardly held aloft as a prop and a historic church that has long welcomed Presidents and their families as a backdrop.

In the process, protesters had been tear gassed and attacked, and Trump had taken a raging conflagration and doused it with accelerant.

“We long ago lost sight of normal, but this was a singularly immoral act,” said Brendan Buck, a longtime former Hill aide who is now a Republican operative.  “The President used force against American citizens, not to protect property, but to soothe his own insecurities.  We will all move on to the next outrage, but this was a true abuse of power and should not be forgotten.”

Trump’s decision to speak to the nation from the Rose Garden and to visit the church came together earlier in the day, said one senior White House official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.  The President was upset about news coverage of him briefly retreating to the White House bunker Friday evening amid protests, and he repeatedly wondered why anyone would have disclosed those details to the news media, two officials said.

He was also frustrated by coverage this weekend of his call with the Floyd family, which he believed was positive — Trump called it “a very good call,” an official said — but was portrayed negatively.

Finally, Trump was angry at cable news footage from Sunday evening, showing protests and riots near the White House, a White House official said.  He spent much of Monday discussing with his team how to demonstrate the streets in Washington were under control and that there would not be riotous scenes in the coming days, the official said.

Inside the West Wing, aides were torn on the proposed spectacle.  One official argued it was necessary, allowing Trump to demonstrate that he was not hunkered down and was out of the White House, as well as standing with evangelical voters by visiting the church.  But two others worried it could backfire.

“It was just to win the news cycle,” one Trump adviser said.  “I’m not sure that things are any better for us tomorrow.”

Jason Miller, a former senior adviser on Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, defended the President’s decision.  He said Trump was elected in part on law-and-order themes, which he needs to continue to hammer, while simultaneously talking to black supporters about some of his initiatives, such as criminal justice reform.

“You’re going to have to go and knock some of the bad guys around a little bit,” Miller said.  “Once they get tear gassed or pepper sprayed, they don't want it to happen again.”

He added that Trump had been reminded by allies that he was elected as a “get-things-done President.”

“He’s not the hand-holder or consoler in chief,” Miller said.  “He was elected to take bold dramatic action and that’s what he did.”

The action began less than an hour before the District’s curfew, and in the moments before Trump was set to speak.  Just after 6 p.m., hundreds of protesters were gathered on H Street NW, facing Lafayette Square.  Though members of the National Guard — wielding shields that said “Military Police” — were lined up behind barricades, along with Secret Service and other law enforcement officers, the protesters remained peaceful.  Several played music, and one painted on an easel.

But shortly thereafter, Attorney General William P. Barr visited the scene, and, about 6:30 p.m., the National Guard moved just yards from the protesters, prompting some screams.  Some protesters threw water bottles, but many simply stood with their arms raised.

Then, the chaos began.

Members of the National Guard knelt briefly to put on gas masks, before suddenly charging eastward down H street, pushing protesters down toward 17th Street.  Authorities shoved protesters down with their shields, fired rubber bullets directly at them, released tear gas and set off flash-bang shells in the middle of the crowd.

Protesters began running, many still with their hands up, shouting, “Don’t shoot.” Others were vomiting, coughing and crying.

As Trump began to speak, some protesters took a knee several blocks from the White House, again yelling, “Hands up!  Don’t shoot!”  But they were never able to stay kneeling for more than a couple of minutes, because authorities kept pushing them forward, as a thick, yellow cloud of smoke hung over the crowd.

About midway through his remarks, and roughly 10 minutes before the city’s curfew was set to go into effect, the President offered a stark warning: “Our 7 o’clock curfew will be strictly enforced.  Those who threaten innocent life and property will be arrested, detained, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Trump concluded by promising that the nation’s “greatest days lie ahead,” and then said, cryptically, “And now I’m going to pay my respects to a very, very special place.  Thank you very much.”

Accompanied by a small cadre of top advisers — including his daughter Ivanka Trump, clad in dark coronavirus mask — the President then made his way over to the church.

One White house official noted the lack of any black aides.  Vice President Pence, a leading administration official to Christian voters, was also conspicuously absent from the event at the church.

Trump seemed to take in the scene and paused in front of St. John’s, turning to the cameras and holding up a black Bible in his right hand.

Asked if it was a family Bible, he said, simply, “It’s a Bible.”

Soon after the church event, the President’s top law enforcement and military officials, including the secretary of defense, attorney general and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, walked across parts of downtown Washington in an unusual show of force.

Some local officials were livid.  D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser upbraided Trump on Twitter: “I imposed a curfew at 7pm.  A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protesters in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult.  Shameful!  DC residents — Go home.  Be safe.”

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said she learned of the President’s visit by watching it on the news.

“I am outraged,” she said, with pauses emphasizing her anger as her voice slightly trembled.  “I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop, holding a Bible, one that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to inflame violence.”

But Trump’s campaign team viewed the visit as a success.  By late Monday, campaign officials were already tweeting a black-and-white photo of him walking to the church with a coterie of aides in his wake.  Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s top spokesman, posted the picture without a caption.

As the curfew descended upon the nation’s capital, the scene had calmed down significantly.  Trump returned to the White House, and the groups of hundreds of protesters began dispersing.

Helicopters could be heard overhead all over the city Monday night, and officials said the streets were far emptier than usual.

FACTCHECK - White House OMB's Misleading Statement

"Did Democrats Once Support Border Wall?" by Robert Farley, FactCheck.org 4/26/2017

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made an apples-to-oranges comparison when he said he couldn't understand why Democrats opposed supplemental funding for a border wall since many of them were for it back in 2006.

Mulvaney is referring to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which called for construction of 700 miles of fencing and enhanced surveillance technology, such as unmanned drones, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar coverage and cameras.  Sen. Chuck Schumer and then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were among a bipartisan majority that voted in favor of the legislation, and it was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

In a very general sense, the Democrats named by Mulvaney supported a bill to build more border fencing in 2006, and Trump is now asking for money to build a wall and fencing.

But the scope and political context of the two efforts are quite different.

Mulvaney raised the comparison during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” on April 23, when he was asked if Trump would risk a government shutdown by insisting a government funding bill include $1.4 billion to begin construction of his promised border wall.  The possibility of a government shutdown is the result of a temporary spending bill passed by Congress last year that funds the government at its current levels only until April 28.  A new funding bill needs to be passed by that deadline to avert a partial government shutdown, which would shutter many government services and agencies except for essential functions like the military, federal prisons and air traffic control.

Schumer and other Democrats said funding for the wall was a nonstarter, and they vowed to oppose a funding bill with that in it.

“We don't understand why the Democrats are so wholeheartedly against it,” Mulvaney said.  “They voted for it in 2006, then-Senator Obama voted for it.  Senator Schumer voted for, Senator Clinton voted for it.  So, I don't understand why Democrats apply in politics just because Donald Trump is in office.”

“Actually, what I would say is that [Democrats] are holding hostage national security,” Mulvaney said later in the interview.  “Again, something they've supported in the recent past when President Obama was in the Senate.  So, we don't understand why this is breaking down like this, and we are worried, Chris, that this is sending a message that this is going to be the next four years, that Neil Gorsuch was not just a one-off thing, the Democrats will oppose everything this president wants to do.”

Trump later backed away from his insistence on $1.4 billion in supplemental funding to begin construction of the wall.  He promised, however, that the wall “will get built,” despite the setback.

Mulvaney's charge that Democrats used to support the very wall Trump is calling for is not new.  In fact, Trump raised that point with Clinton in the third presidential debate.

“Hillary Clinton wanted the wall,” Trump said at the Oct. 19 debate.  “Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts.  Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn't built.  But Hillary Clinton wanted the wall.”

Clinton responded, “There are some limited places where that was appropriate.  There also is necessarily going to be new technology and how best to deploy that.  But it is clear when you look at what Donald has been proposing.  He started his campaign bashing immigrants, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals and drug dealers, that he has a very different view about what we should do to deal with immigrants.”

A spokesman in Schumer's office pointed out similar contrasts between the two plans.  Trump during the campaign called for a 30-foot tall concrete wall for the length of the border.  But the Secure Fence Act was “a bipartisan plan to strategically place clear-view, secure fencing that works hand in glove with surveillance technology.  Democrats and Republicans have supported such policies in the 2006 Secure Fence Act and the 2013 bipartisan immigration reform law,” Schumer's spokesman said.

“The contexts, I think, were different,” Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, told us via email.  “Today's discussion involves fencing off the entire 2,000-mile border, while the earlier debate focused on adding significant (700 miles) but still limited miles of fencing at locations designated by DHS as necessary.”

The flow of illegal immigration has also changed dramatically since 2006, Mittelstadt said.  When the Secure Fence Act was being debated in 2006, it was a time of surging illegal immigration.  The peak in the unauthorized population was reached in 2007, Mittelstadt said, when it was estimated at 12.2 million people – a number that has since declined by more than 1 million.  Total apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the southern border are also down, from just over a million in fiscal year 2006 to about 400,000 in 2016, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mittelstadt noted that the political context is also vastly different, as some Democrats ceded to the Secure Fence Act as a political compromise to a Republican plan to criminalize all unauthorized immigrants, and to make it a crime to assist unauthorized immigrants.

“It's an apples-to-oranges comparison,” agreed Edward Alden, an expert on immigration policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Secure Fence Act was written in a way to get support from both sides,” Alden told us via email.  “The Democrats, by and large, supported the use of 'tactical' fencing in high-traffic areas, something that the Border Patrol had long favored.  Trump's wall proposal seems to call for fencing the entire border, which Democrats have never supported.”

Part of the problem in comparing the plans is the difficulty in pinpointing what exactly Trump is proposing.

“We don't know the specifics of what's being proposed,” Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, told us in a phone interview.  “It's not exactly clear what type of fencing we're talking about, and where.  There's a lot of ambiguity about what the plan entails.”

On March 17, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued two requests for proposals “to acquire multiple conceptual wall designs with the intent to construct multiple prototypes.”  One RFP is for a “solid concrete border wall,” and the second RFP is for “other border wall.”  For the “other border wall,” the RFP says: “Prototypes constructed in response to this solicitation must offer designs that are alternatives to reinforced solid concrete walls (i.e. no solid concrete external faces).”

The wall — whether solid concrete or an alternative design — must be between 18 feet and 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide, according to the RFPs.  It also must go 6 feet below the ground to prevent people from tunneling under the wall.

There is currently quite a bit of fencing along the southern border, Wilson said, thanks in large part to the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  But it is of various types, roughly divided between “pedestrian fencing” (seen here) — designed to stop foot traffic — and the less substantial “vehicle” fencing (seen here), which is designed to stop vehicles but can be walked through with ease.  In the places where it makes the most sense to have fencing, Wilson said, there is some kind of fencing in place already.

As for the length of the wall proposed by Trump, the U.S.-Mexico border is 1,933 miles.  But a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by Reuters indicated that the administration will not seek to build new barriers the full length of the border.

“The plan lays out what it would take to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls covering just over 1,250 miles (2,000 km) by the end of 2020,” Reuters wrote on Feb. 9.  “With 654 miles (1,046 km) of the border already fortified, the new construction would extend almost the length of the entire border.”

The ambiguity of what's actually being proposed by Trump has also drawn Republican opposition.

According to a Wall Street Journal survey, “Not a single member of Congress who represents the territory on the southwest border said they support President Donald Trump's request for $1.4 billion to begin construction of his promised wall.”  (Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has since introduced a bill that would reserve any funds forfeited to the U.S. by Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to pay for “completion of the wall along the Southern border.”)  Several Republicans told the Wall Street Journal they were concerned that Trump's immigration policy focused too narrowly on building a wall, rather than a comprehensive immigration plan, or that border security funds would be more wisely spent elsewhere.

There's another difference between the 2006 bill and what Trump is proposing.  Trump has repeatedly promised that Mexico will pay for the wall.  A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Wall Street Journal, “The White House's demands that American taxpayers now foot the bill for a multi-billion dollar boondoggle are intensely opposed by Democrats and many Republicans.”

Not everyone agrees, however, that Democrats are not flip-flopping on the issue.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, said that because the public doesn't know exactly what border barriers the Trump administration wants to build, Mulvaney's statement is not an “exact” comparison.  But, he said, to dismiss it simply on that basis would be “tendentiously literal.”

“The fact is that, other than the 'Mexico will pay for it' stuff, Trump is simply channeling the 2006 Secure Fence Act, and Schumer et al. who voted for it out of political calculation are indeed hypocrites for opposing the attempt to finally bring that law to fruition,” Krikorian told us via email.

At the surface level, it is true in a broad sense that Democrats including Schumer, Obama and Clinton have in the past supported border fencing.  All three voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and all three supported the 2013 Senate immigration overhaul that passed the Senate, and which called for tougher border security including some additional fencing.  But to claim that those measures are the same as what Trump is proposing is a stretch.

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.

#NOTMYPRESIDENT - Trump's Whitehouse Administration

"What Bannon and Priebus mean for the Trump administration" PBS NewsHour 11/15/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President-elect Donald Trump has announced two key White House positions: RNC chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and the controversial appointment of Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, as chief strategist and senior counselor.  Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek and Mark Leibovich of the New York Times Magazine join John Yang to discuss the picks.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Just this past weekend, president-elect Trump announced his picks for two key posts in the White House.  RNC Chairman Reince Priebus will serve as White House chief of staff.  And Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, will serve as Mr.  Trump's chief strategist and senior counselor.

Our John Yang has more.

JOHN YANG (NewsHour):  For more on these two men tapped to advise the president, we're joined by Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, and Joshua Green, senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Josh, Mark, thanks for joining us.

Josh, let me start with you.

You profiled Steve Bannon more than a year ago, before a lot of people realized who he was.  That's the employment that's gaining a lot of controversy.  Just this afternoon, Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, took to the Senate floor and criticized Bannon in pretty harsh terms.

SEN.  HARRY REID, Minority Leader:  If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon.  Rescind it.  Don't do it.

Think about this.  Don't do it.  As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it will be impossible to take Trump's efforts to heal the nation seriously.

JOHN YANG:  Josh, who is Steve Bannon, and why is he attracting all this criticism?

JOSHUA GREEN, Bloomberg Businessweek:  Well, Bannon is an odd and interesting character.

He's a former Goldman Sachs banker who sort of became radicalized into the Tea Party movement and eventually wound up as the publisher of Breitbart News, which is the hard-right populist Web site that was an early champion of Trump's.

I think the reason he's so controversial is that Breitbart publishes a lot of things that are vaguely racist, anti-Semitic, far, far outside the bounds of what would ordinarily be considered acceptable in U.S. politics.

And so I think there's quite a bit of shock at the fact that he's been elevated to a senior position in the Trump White House.

JOHN YANG:  You talk about Breitbart News.  We have got some headlines that we can show to give people an idea of what Breitbart News is:

• “Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.”
• “Gabby Giffords, The Gun Control Movement's Human Shield.”
• “The Solution to Online Harassment Is Simple: Women Should Log Off.”

How much of Breitbart is Steve Bannon, and how much of Steve Bannon is Breitbart?

JOSHUA GREEN:  Well, Bannon doesn't write often, and I don't think he writes the headlines, but he's sort of the pirate captain and the guy ultimately responsible for what's published there.

And if you know Bannon and if you read Breitbart News, essentially, what they do is they set out to shock and scandalize and upset people by targeting both political establishments.  In Internet language, they're essentially a trolling operation.

And ordinarily these people exist on the fringes of journalism and on the fringes of politics.  And what's so unusual here is that Bannon has now been brought into the West Wing of the White House.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE - 106 Year Old Breaks-Out

"Watch a 106-year-old woman bust a move with the president" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  106-year-old Virginia McLaurin has lived through 18 different presidents, though she never thought she’d live to see an African-American in the White House, let alone meet him.  But thanks to an online campaign, McLaurin was able to fulfill her dream and even bust a move with the president and first lady.  The White House commemorated the meeting with a video released on social media.

DIPLOMACY - China White House Summit

"What did and didn’t get done at the U.S.-China White House summit" PBS NewsHour 9/25/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Climate change was one area of agreement between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, but the leaders made little headway on human rights and a South China Sea territory dispute.  Judy Woodruff talks with Christopher Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Susan Shirk of University of California, San Diego.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  For more on what they might and might not be discussing at that dinner, I’m joined by John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago and former Air Force officer.  Susan Shirk, she was a deputy assistant secretary of state for China in the Clinton administration.  She now chairs the 21st Century China Program at the University of California, San Diego.  And Christopher Johnson, a senior adviser who closely watches China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Welcome, all three, to the program.

Let’s talk first about what was accomplished, China signing on to this climate change agreement, so-called cap-and-trade system, Susan Shirk, wherein they limit how much an industry can pollute.  How significant is this?

SUSAN SHIRK, University of California, San Diego:  Well, it’s very significant because air pollution has become a domestic political problem in China.

And the Chinese leadership has, therefore, gotten very serious about its commitments on climate change, because these two issues are very much related.  And to see China and the United States both making strong commitments on climate change going into the U.N. climate summit…

WHITE HOUSE - Keeping of Secrets

"Obama White House keeping more secrets than any before" PBS NewsHour 3/19/2015

My opinion?  President Obama has just run up against the reality of the post-9/11 world.  Some things made public mean our enemies get the same information, which is not good.  Then add all the talk about 'privacy' and so why wonder some redactions may be about privacy.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Despite a pledge to deliver the most open and transparent administration in U.S. history, some say that the Obama White House has fallen short on that promise, with harsh punishments for high-profile whistleblowers and a record number of Freedom of Information Act request denials.  Hari Sreenivasan learns more from Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Even before he was elected, President Obama promised his would be the most open and transparent administration ever.  He can claim credit for some progress on that front, including opening up Presidential records, declassifying some data, and pushing federal agencies to reveal more information to the public.

But, by other measures, many experts and journalists say the administration falls far short, including in its treatment of high-profile whistleblowers.

And a new Associated Press analysis says the administration has set a record for denying access to files or censoring them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hari Sreenivasan has the story.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The analysis looked at requests for information made to 100 federal agencies last year by citizens, journalists and businesses.  More than 700,000 requests were made.  The Associated Press said the administration either denied access to information or censored in 39 percent of those requests.  That’s more than 250,000 cases overall.

Sometimes, the denial was small, such as a phone number.  Sometimes, it was the majority of a document.

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was pressed on the administration’s transparency.  His analysis was quite different.

JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary:  Across the administration, we actually do have a lot to brag about when it comes to responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act requests.

And just today, the Justice Department did release records or metrics to fiscal year 2014.  The administration in fiscal year 2014 alone processed 647,142 FOIA requests, and over 91 percent of those requests resulted in the release of either some or all of the requested records.