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Nothings done until its done, and thats always been true in Trump world and this is yet another of many examples, said a person close to the White House.

The DPC is a little-known but influential office within the White House. During Trumps tenure, various White House power centers have vied over installing allies to lead the council. The latest jockeying came after Joe Grogan, who had worked closely with departed acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, recently announced he would leave his position.

Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, floated several people for the role, including both Lyons and Rollins. Newly installed chief of staff Mark Meadows floated his own name, Stephen Miller, an influential immigration policy aide. It was expected that the domestic policy chief would play a significant role in the presidents efforts to reopen the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

From left, White House staff secretary Derek Lyons, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, and White House social media director Dan Scavino, walk on the South Lawn of the White House to join President Donald Trump aboard Marine One in Jan. 2020. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

After several days of deliberations, it appeared Kushner and Meadows had selected Lyons to serve as acting DPC director for the rest of Trumps term, while continuing in his current role as White House staff secretary, a key official who manages document flow to the president.

POLITICO reported on May 6 that Lyons had been selected, citing four people familiar with the decision, including two White House officials. The next day, another White House official didnt dispute the appointment and provided a comment.

Derek is a loyal and highly respected member of the Trump White House who has worked to implement Donald Trumps policy agenda for three and a half years as staff secretary, the official said May 7.

But the decision apparently wasnt final. And the news of Lyons likely appointment frustrated some conservatives, given his former affiliation with Jeb Bushs 2016 presidential campaign.

Lyons, a lawyer and Harvard Law School grad, started his career as a law clerk to Brett Kavanaugh when the Supreme Court justice was still a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He later worked on Capitol Hill.

But it was his time with Jeb Bushs campaign that made some conservatives suspicious. His affiliation with Kushner also raised some eyebrows, given that Trumps son-in-law has pushed for some more moderate policies, including business-friendly immigration changes that hardliners say are too lenient.

This is not what #AmericaFirst voters signed up for, tweeted conservative commentator Michelle Malkin May 6 using the hashtag #JaredKushnerIsNotMyPresident. Malkin described Lyons as someone who comes from Jeb Bushs Illegal Immigration Is An Act of Love wing of the GOP.

Trump has picked Derek Lyons as the head of the Domestic Policy Council...- hes a former Jeb! Person, tweeted Ryan Girdusky, a conservative writer and political consultant.

This past Friday, that White House official said Lyons was never officially offered the job. But others in the White House thought Lyons had the gig. They noted that on an internal White House deregulation policy call several days earlier, Rollins even congratulated Lyons on his reported new policy role, according to a White House official familiar with the call.

The first White House official said Meadows received praise internally about Lyons but some in the White House worried that criticism from influential conservative pundits, such as Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson of Fox News, would soon follow.

A senior White House official pushed back on conservative complaints about Lyons ideology, noting he has been directly involved in crafting, finalizing and executing the staunchest border security measures and most rigorous immigration control measures that we have put in place. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who worked with Lyons in the White House during impeachment, called him "a true conservative" who has "an excellent relationship with the president."

In a statement Friday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany praised Lyons.

"Derek Lyons is an invaluable member of the White House and a highly impressive and respected colleague, she said. He has been elevated to one of the highest titles in the White House, and for good reason."

There was another problem that arose during deliberations: Meadows and Kushner had yet to have Trump sign off on Lyons appointment when the news broke, according to two White House officials.

The first White House official said Lyons and Rollins were finalists for the job, but the job ultimately went to Rollins in part because she would be able to appear on television as part of the public facing role of DPC director.

There was talk of [Lyons] doing both roles, but it was decided the roles shouldnt be combined, the official said.

By the end of this week, Rollins had been tapped to head the DPC in an acting capacity. The New York Times first reported Rollins appointment Thursday night. Rollins introduced herself as DPC director on at least two calls with White House staff Friday, according to two people. A formal announcement is expected Monday, according to the White House.

Brooke is really Jareds person. ... I think that played a big part in it, said one person close to the White House.

Rollins didnt respond to a request for comment. Lyons had no comment.

After the White House settled on Rollins to lead the DPC, Lyons was elevated to the title of counselor, making him one of the closest advisers to the president alongside Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, who have similar titles, although Conway is senior counselor. The move was seen internally by some as a face-saving measure and by others as a Kushner attempt to diminish Conways status. But the White House said Lyons was promoted to give him an expanded role on policy issues.

"Derek does extraordinary work in his role as Staff Secretary," Meadows said in a statement. "Given his large portfolio, elevating him to Counselor to the President made the most sense. This is an expansive role that will put him in an additional advisory role to President Trump on a wide range of legal, policy, and strategic matters."

Rollins also serves as director of the Office of American Innovation, a Kushner-launched office that handles various policy issues. Rollins and two others in that office, JaRon Smith and Theo Wold, were similarly considered for the DPC job. All three worked with Kushner on criminal justice reform and his long-stalled push to overhaul the immigration system.

Rollins, Grogan said, is a committed conservative, shes a team player, shes very smart, not just on policy but also on communications. I dont know that theres a better choice.

Previously, Rollins served as president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think tank based in Austin partly funded by the Koch Brothers, and as a top aide to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who went on to become Trumps first Energy secretary.

Kushner previously suggested Rollins for the DPC job in late 2018, before the job ultimately went to Grogan.

Rollins has more credibility with some conservatives than Lyons on a number of issues, such as fiscal policy. But not everyone was satisfied.

Picking the former leader of a faux nonpartisan research institute funded by corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers speaks for itself, a conservative close to the White House said.

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.

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How chatter and conservative anger upended a White House staffing search - POLITICO

Chattanooga Design Studio announces its next 2020 installment of CIVIQ: A Speaker Series Honoring Robert Taylor. CIVIQ is a free quarterly speaker series that showcases visionary practitioners in other cities to connect the Chattanooga community with national and international trends in urban design. COVID-19 has changed the way we interact, socialize, and learn from each other and as such, CIVIQ is adapting and moving online, said officials.

The two-part virtual CIVIQ event will be held Thursday. At 4 p.m. there will be a virtual networking Happy (Half) Hour featuring a cocktail class with Kaleena Goldsworthy-Warnock of The Bitter Bottle. This happy hour is followed by the main event, an interactive live webinar from 4:30-5:45 p.m., focusing on the challenges, opportunities, and creative resiliency that the community is faced with during COVID-19. Participants will hear from five members of the community that offer unique perspectives shedding light into how the public, personal, community, and civic health have been affected by this pandemic and how these leaders are finding ways to be creatively resilient during this time and in the future.

Ann Coulter will moderate the panel consisting of Dr. Michele Pickett, Dr. Greg Heath, Jermaine Freeman, and Michael Stone. A native Chattanoogan, Ms. Coulter is principal of A. Coulter Consulting with an extensive and reputable background in the urban planning and downtown redevelopment of Chattanooga. Dr. Michele Pickett is the founding physician and executive director of LifeSpring community Health, a faith-based community health organization that was founded to address the health care needs of uninsured children. Dr. Heath is Guerry Professor in the Public Health Program at UTC and serves on the Hamilton County COVID-19 Task Force. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Medicine at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine Chattanooga. Dr. Heath was formerly a lead health scientist with the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr. Freeman serves as deputy chief of staff for the city of Chattanooga. He was recently an economic development officer, and prior to that the civic engagement coordinator and holds an MBA from UTC and BA from Morehouse College. Mr. Stone currently serves as the director of Innovative Learning for the Public Education Foundation in Chattanooga. He played a central role in the development of the first Fab Lab in the state of Tennessee in 2014, and has since led an effort to open digital fabrication labs, dubbed Volkswagen eLabs, in 16 public schools in Hamilton County.

This event is free and open to the public, please register for the virtual Happy (Half) Hour and the Live Webinar via https://www.chattanoogastudio.com/civiq or Chattanooga Design Studios Facebook Events page.

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CIVIQ: Creative Resiliency During COVID-19 - The Chattanoogan

United States (US)President Donald Trump ordered the temporary suspension of all immigration to the US to protect American jobs for Americans hit by layoffs that have spiked to levels not seen since the Great Depression of 1929. It is now up to 26.4 million.

But look harder and you will find an unwavering determination of this administration or that of some senior staffers, even if not necessarily backed by Trump to curb, curtail or kill the H-1B short-term non-immigrant visa programme. This was started to enable US firms to hire foreigners, to make up for the shortage of highly-skilled workers locally. Also in the crosshairs is the other non-immigrant work visa, H-2B, for farmworkers.

Both are currently exempt from the 60-day suspension. And the reaction in the echo chamber has been instructive. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News anchor, while mentioning H-1B and H-2Bs, vented on air, Thats an awful lot of exceptions. Ann Coulter, a leading conservative columnist, added it to her list of disappointments with Trump. Breitbart News, which is extremely close to the Trump White House, griped that an earlier draft of the final order was much more expansive. Indeed, it was. Breitbart News later reported that the earlier draft proposed suspending non-immigrant work visas H-1B and H-2B. So, what happened? Who or what stopped the president?

Not clear, yet. No one was named. But there are clear factions in the White House on immigration. Senior adviser Stephen Miller is the leading hawk and is seen as the man behind every extreme order on immigration or action, from the Muslim travel ban and family separation to denying green cards to applicants who took government benefits. He has strong views against H-1B visa programme, and once named Indian companies that he suspected of gaming the H-1B programme. On the other side are the moderates, a small but perhaps the most powerful faction in this White House; the presidents son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, who are both officially senior advisers to the president. It was not immediately known if this dynamic killed the draft.The US presidents own views on H-1B have been somewhat ambivalent. He has acknowledged using the programme in his businesses before becoming president, but has also contended that the programme has been abused and has ordered its reform to, among other things, conform to his overarching Buy American, Hire American vision. But a nip here and a tuck there will not satisfy critics of the programme, who are now using the coronavirus epidemic to call for expanded action.

The executive order signed by Trump provides for additional measures to deal with worsening unemployment; non-immigrant visas. H-1B, H-2B and other non-immigrant visas could find themselves stripped of their current exemption. There is an additional issue. Temporary suspensions are not always temporary the ban on travellers from certain Muslim-majority countries that was first ordered in January 2017 for 90 days remains in force three years hence, morphing through several iterations.

yashwant.raj@hindustantimes.com

The views expressed are personal

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The battle in the White House on immigration | Opinion - Hindustan Times

When the after-action report on the current pandemic is being prepared, Im going to ask the guy with the notepad to write down: China and globalists.

Those words wont be on Trumps list. He cant stop gushing about how much he respects China and the American companies that have outsourced jobs there. Even as China withholds vital medical supplies, he refuses to end our suicidal dependence on them.

His one slight annoyance with China is that it lied about the Wuhan virus, allowing the disease to explode across the globe.

I have a longer list of complaints, beginning with the fact that they eat bats. The resulting pandemic now raging through our country would be bad enough, but our new crisis is a shortage of medical equipment.

Too bad we shipped all our manufacturing to China! Not to worry, surely China wouldnt disrupt the sacred global supply chain.

Oops. China is stockpiling masks and ventilators.

And theres more good news! China makes more than 90% of our antibiotics, vitamin C, ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, 70% of acetaminophen, and 40% to 45% of heparin, according to The New York Times. The last American penicillin plant closed more than 15 years ago.

In early March, the Chinese government ominously warned that if China stopped exporting drugs, the United States would sink into the hell of a novel coronavirus epidemic.

For decades, people like Trumps trade director Peter Navarro have warned us that something like this would happen someday. But we were condescendingly told, This is capital seeking the most efficient market! And, anyway, if China screws with us, well just make it ourselves.

Really? With broken-down buildings, a dispossessed workforce and no machinery? Unfashionable working-class people in the industrial Midwest were discarded long ago. They may as well have had obsolete stamped on their foreheads.

But I notice that you, Wall Street, made a lot of money off of globalization.

Oh, did I? I didnt notice!

What happened to your vaunted concern for Chinas human rights violations the Uyghurs, the Falun Gong, Tibet, child labor?

You should see my place in the Hamptons!

Even before China gave us this latest viral disease not to be confused with H1N1, Asian flu, SARS and bird flu, also from China one of the most frequent questions about Amazon products was: Is this made in China?

Obviously, a lot of consumers would happily pay more to know that something is made in the USA or at least not in China. Wed like to support our fellow Americans. We also prefer products that dont kill the family pet, instantly fall apart or risk being embargoed during a viral pandemic.

How about that search refinement, Amazon? Made in USA including constituent parts or 0% Chinese. Id wager these would be more popular than the hundreds of other search parameters, such as star ratings, price, manufacturer, prime, calories, gluten-free and so on.

Not a chance. The globalists are making a lot of money selling us crappy products, manufactured in a culturally backward, totalitarian regime with zero quality control and absolutely no interest in the well-being of our country.

Why hasnt Trump seized on this nightmare of the New World Order to fulfill a campaign promise and bring manufacturing home?

Where are the massive tariffs on Chinese goods and the Buy American programs?

How about telling Ivanka, No, you are not going to make it even more expensive for companies to hire Americans with this ridiculous Paid Family Medical Leave Act! In fact, were going to seek the repeal of all laws that create jobs only for trial lawyers.

Even a lot of the American companies were so proud of for stepping up to make masks in this crisis ... are making them in China. (New York Times, March 13, 2020: A General Motors joint venture in southwestern China built 20 of its own mask-making machines and began bulk production.)

Trumps reaction? Flatter China so theyll keep buying our soybeans. Maybe theyll throw Jared some business!

Nearly a month ago, The New York Times reported that Trump was preparing an executive order, which could be released in the coming days, requiring the federal government to buy American-made pharmaceuticals.

It apparently went into the same file as that executive order on anchor babies. Were still waiting.

Navarro had the executive order ready to go, but then dozens of pharmaceutical companies lobbied against it, arguing that a diverse pharmaceutical supply chain is precisely what enables the industry to respond quickly and make adjustments in its supply chain sourcing during natural emergencies and global public health crises.

China: If we cut you off, America, youll be in hell.

The Big Pharma lobbyists also noted that Trumps (idle) threat for America to make its own drugs could run afoul of commitments it made under the WTOs Government Procurement Agreement.

NO! WE CANT VIOLATE THE WTOS GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT AGREEMENT!

Trump is the president of the United States. Either he is responsible for a monstrous virus arriving on our shores and destroying our economy or China is. I expected the media to say, Trump! I didnt expect Trump to agree.

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ANN COULTER: The bill for globalism has arrived - MDJOnline.com

I imagine that, if youve never heard of Wendy Bell, you find her anointment as Americas Worst White Woman to be suspicious.

Who is this mystery woman, I picture you asking, who somehow beat Ann Coulter, Abigail Fisher, and Toejam Lobotomy to be Americas worst white woman? How is she the LeBron of Karens?

Well, years ago, when Wendy Bell was still an anchorwoman at WTAE-TV (Pittsburghs ABC affiliate), six people were killed in a horrific mass shooting in a predominately black Pittsburgh suburb. A week after the shooting, Bell went to her Facebook fan page and published what historians now refer to as the Moby Dick of White Privilege. (By historians I mean I.)

She began with some thoughts on how she hadnt been able to walk or talk since the shooting, continued by effectively calling the mothers of the suspected shooters broke black hoes, described the shooting with Pulitzer-level black poverty porn imagery, and then ended with a pitch-perfect screed on how a recent family night at the Cheesecake Factory with a smiling and skipping black server gave her hope for us. (If you think Im making this up, pleaseI beg of youread what she wrote. And even if you dont think Im making this up, read it for your own entertainment.)

Bell was eventually fired from WTAE. She subsequently sued them for racial discrimination, and the case was settled.

I thought this would be the last of Wendy Bell; that maybe the only time Id see or hear from her going forward would be in line at PetSmart. But Wendy Bell is the Jason Voorhees of white women: Just when you think shes finally gone, shes behind you with a podcast. She was hired in late 2018 by KDKA Radio, where shes had carte blanche to be as Wendy as she can be.

This brings us to Sunday, where during a Facebook Live segment of her show, she admitted that she kinda, sorta wants to kill your grandparents for freedom. (Seriously, you need to watch this. Please, please, please, please, please, please watch this.)

Even for her, this is...a lot. The whiteboard, the gestures, the eyes, the sweaterthis is Peak Wendy. And this is the same woman who said He moved like a dancer with a satisfied smile on his face. And I couldnt take my eyes off him. Hes going to Make It in reference to a teenager at a restaurant who happened to be serving while black.

Social distancing has made me realize how much I took for granted, and how much of that I truly miss. The thought of shopping at Giant Eagle, for instance, induces nostalgia. And today, after seeing Wendy back in the news, I realized how much Ive truly missed her unique brand of dangerous, triflin, batshit crazy. Welcome back, old friend.

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Wendy Bell, America's Worst White Woman, Is Back (and Wants to Kill Your Grandparents) - The Root