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By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

President Donald Trump stunned observers Thursday evening when, in the midst of a tense government shutdown fight and the day after he announced an unexpected U.S. withdrawal from Syria, he said on Twitter that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will be retiring at the end of February. In reality, it was clear Mattis quit.

“General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years,” Trump wrote. “During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting……equipment. General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!”

Many observers and critics of the president had long believed that Mattis was one of the key figures in the administration protecting the country from Trump's worst ideas and plans.

And despite Trump's claim that Mattis was retiring, the general's resignation letter made it clear he was leaving because of disagreements, not because he is aging out of the position.

“Because you have the right to a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mattis wrote.

The decision to withdraw from Syria was believed to be against the desire of Trump's military advisers, including Mattis. And earlier on Thursday, it was reported that Trump was looking to withdraw more than 10,000 troops from Afghanistan, which is also believed to be contrary to Mattis' views.

So it was clear that Mattis had come to view himself as lacking influence in the White House, and that he would be better off quitting than sticking around. 

And as CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins observed, there wasn't “a single word of praise for Trump” in the letter Mattis sent.

<Img align="left" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt="" style="border:0;float:left;margin:0;padding:0;width:1px!important;height:1px!important" …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Democrat Barbara Underwood, outgoing attorney general for New York State, announced this week that President Donald J. Trump’s charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, must “dissolve under judicial supervision” and that its “remaining charitable assets” must be distributed “to reputable organizations approved by my office.” Underwood filed a lawsuit against Trump in June, accusing the Trump Foundation of illegally using that charity to promote his presidential campaign in 2016. And in his latest article for the New York Times, liberal/progressive opinion columnist Charles M. Blow cites the downfall of the Trump Foundation as a reason why his view of the president has gone from bad to worse. 

In his dark-humored column, Blow notes that he has been lambasting Trump consistently for two years because of his “immorality, dishonesty, fraudulence and grift.” But Blow stresses that he is having to reevaluate Trump, writing, “It’s so much worse than I thought….I had no idea how immoral Trump actually is.”

Blow notes that Michael Cohen (Trump’s former personal attorney) has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for, among other things, campaign finance violations—and that, according to federal prosecutors, Cohen made illegal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential election on orders from Trump. Then, Blow adds that the Trump Foundation was as corrupt as Trump’s campaign.

Blow quotes Underwood as saying that the Trump Foundation showed “a shocking pattern of illegality” when it coordinated with Trump’s 2016 campaign—and that the Foundation was “little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”  

The New York Times columnist asks, “How can a family that can’t run a charity run a country?” adding that when he called Trump a “pathological liar” in the past, he “could not have predicted” that the president would become even less truthful.

Blow concludes his column by asserting that he will continue to “worry about the republic in which we live. Trump has the capacity to damage or even destroy it. That’s not …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

On Wednesday night, Republicans in the U.S. Senate—hoping to avoid a government shutdown—passed a spending bill that would fund the federal governmentthrough February 8, 2019. But the bill did not include the $5 billion for a U.S./Mexico border wall that President Donald Trump has been demanding—and the president is refusing to sign it. To further complicate matters, most senators have already left town for the holidays.

Today on Twitter, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine heard that Trump was refusing to sign a Senate bill that lacked funding for a border wall, she “almost dropped her handbag.”

“Did he just say that?” Raju quoted Collins as saying. “Ugh, are you ruining my life?”

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told CNN that so many senators had left Washington, DC for the holidays that the nation’s capital resembles a “ghost town.” That means there may not even be enough senators to vote if Trump wants to force another piece of legislation through — which would be almost guaranteed to fail in any event.

Johnson expressed frustration with Trump’s unwillingness to compromise on a border wall, asserting, “I’m not sure what leverage the president thinks he has at this moment. The way you create leverage is [you] keep this issue alive and keep arguing why we need to secure the border.”

Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives have been discussing a possible spending bill of their own.

Via Twitter, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt (host of “Kasie DC”) reported, “On the House floor, leaders scrambling to see if they can pass $5 billion in wall funding as Republicans say they want President Trump to tweet before they say ‘yes.’”

Hunt added that “one GOP member of Congress” told her, “That’s what the fuck serving in Congress has come to.”

As difficult as it is for Trump to get funding for a border wall through Congress in the late 2018 lame duck session, it will become even more difficult in 2019—when Democrats, having achieved a net gain of …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Phillip Smith, Independent Media Institute

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the Senate on Tuesday approved a major prison and sentencing reform bill, the First Step Act (S.3649) on a vote of 87-12. The bill now goes back to the House, which is expected to pass it easily, and then to the desk of President Trump, who has vowed to sign it.

Introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the bill added significant sentencing reform provisions to a prison reform bill passed earlier by the House.

“The First Step Act will help keep our streets safe and it offers a fresh start to those who’ve put in the work to get right with the law while paying their debt to society,” Grassley said on the Senate floor after the vote. “It also addresses unfairness in prison sentencing and revises policies that have led to overcrowded prisons and ballooning taxpayer expenses.”

“I think we showed something which most American people wouldn’t have believed—that a bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum could tackle one of the toughest political issues of our day, assemble an array of support—left, right, and center—from members of the Senate as well as organizations devoted to law enforcement as well as civil rights, and at the end of it have something we all felt was a fair product to send over to the House, which I hope will act on this very quickly,” Durbin said. “It is, however, the first step. We’ve got to start thinking about the second step. And we need the help of all of our colleagues when shaping that.”

In addition to the prison reform language, the bill’s key sentencing provisions include:

• Retroactivity for the Fair Sentencing Act (the 2010 law that reduced the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity), allowing the potential release of around 2,600 people;

• Expansion of the “safety valve” allowing judges more discretion to sentence beneath mandatory minimum sentences;

• Reform of the “three …read more

  Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen appeared before Congress on Thursday, giving Democratic lawmakers the opportunity to voice their opposition and distress at the administration's cruel and disastrous immigration policies.

When Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has his opportunity to ask questions, he decided to give Nielsen a lecture instead. Pointing out that it was the Christmas season, Guttierez noted that it was “a time in which we celebrate Jesus Christ. A Jesus Christ who had to flee for his life with Mary and Joseph. Thank God there wasn't a wall that kept him from seeking refuge in Egypt.”

As he continued, he became more impassioned and outraged at the secretary.

“Shame on everybody who separates children and allows them to stay at the other side of the border, fearing death, fearing hunger, fearing sickness. Shame on us for wearing out badge of Christianity during Christmas and allow the secretary to come here and lie,” he said.

“Calling me a liar is fighting words,” Nielsen said. “I'm not a liar.”

But she continued to repeat a lie, insisting that the administration has never had a “family separation policy.” Instead, as she has repeatedly and condescendingly argued, she holds that the administration's policies practice of taking children away from parents was demanded by laws Congress had already passed, not anything the executive branch actively did.

This argument is at best semantic wordplay — more accurately, it's gross deception. As many have pointed out, the administration intentionally and clearly adopted a new policy in the past year of “zero tolerance” that automatically entailed separating families who were accused of crossing the border illegally. Officials, including former DHS Secretary John Kelly and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, made clear that separating families was the point — to create a deterrent effect. Nielsen claimed that the administration didn't have a policy of family separations because it didn't separate every immigrant family — but that's as absurd as claiming that a government doesn't have an education policy because not every child goes to public school.

Frustrated with her deceptive tactics, Gutierrez walked out in the …read more

Source: ALTERNET