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When German and American political leaders strongly disagree about a crucial issue in public it normally sounds something like this.

"This country under my leadership is not available for adventure," German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder said at a campaign event of his Social Democratic Party in the summer of 2002. He was of course referring to the potential US invasion of Iraq which ultimately began under President George W. Bush in 2003. Schroeder's public rebuke is said to not only have seriously irked Bush, but also to have damaged their personal relationship beyond repair.

Read: Trump and Merkel to talks NATO, Ukraine and climate change

"I am not convinced, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer famously told US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Munich Security Conference in February 2003, one month before the American invasion of Iraq would begin.

Fischer openly rebuking the case for war made by Rumsfeld in front of a slew of global luminaries was highly unusual in the context of the traditionally close and at least publicly harmonious relationship between leaders of both countries.

Libya, Cuba and Germany

"I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect," Pentagon chief Rumsfeld, also not once to mince words, said about Germanyin February 2003, incensing Berlin by likening the country's stance vis-a-vis the Iraq invasion to that of two nations traditionally hostile towards the US.

After his first travel ban was slapped down by several courts, Trump issued a revised order banning travel from six Muslim-majority countries. This time, Trump dropped Iraq from a list that included seven blacklisted countries first time around. The new order temporarily suspended the entire US refugee program, but exempted those with visas and who had already been formally accepted as refugees.

From February and into March, President Trump further advanced his political objectives through a combination of executive orders, memoranda, memos, and the signing of bills into law. He also used his executive authority to undo guidelines issued under the Obama administration.

In February, Trump signed 11 new executive orders (broad ranging directives that help the executive branch manage federal government operations) and issued one memorandum (a more direct executive action aimed at a specific agency) targeting the Department of Labor. The US President also signed five bills sent to his Oval Office desk by Congress, which will now become law.

President Trump's first February executive order established "core principles" for regulating the financial system and requires the Treasury Department to review and report on key provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. Republicans had criticized the act, which was implemented in the aftermath of the Great Recession, for strangling financial flexibility and inhibiting economic growth.

Through a series of three executive orders, Trump followed up on his campaign promise to crack down on what he had described as rampant crime in the US. He ordered Attorney General Jeff Sessions to create a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety and heralded stronger combating of transnational crime. Trump also called for new federal crime criteria to prevent violence against police.

On February 9, Trump signed Executive Order 13775 reversing changes to the Justice Department's line of succession that President Obama had made mere days before leaving office. Trump had already side-stepped Obama's order when he removed and replaced acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she had refused to defend Trump's travel ban.

Executive Order 13777, signed February 24, builds off of his previous January 30 order prioritizing massive deregulation across the federal government. The February order introduces Regulatory Reform Officers into federal agencies and creates reform task forces. Together, these bodies will advise on the "repeal, replacement or modification" of regulations perceived as prohibitive or ineffective.

Trump began undoing environmental protections on two fronts. Firstly, he issued an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to review a rule that empowers the federal government to protect waterways. Though unlikely to have immediate effects, the order could eventually weaken the 1972 Clean Water Act. Trump also signed a bill invalidating an Obama-era stream protection rule.

Surronded in the Oval Office by leaders from historically black educational institutions, Trump signed Executive Order 13779 in order to "promote excellence and innovation" at HBCUs. Primary goals including increasing private-sector participation in the institutions, broadly improving HBCUs capabilities, improving the relationships between HBCUs and the federal government.

In a two-page letter to US public schoos, the Trump administration revoked a controversial Obama-era federal directive allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choosing. The White House jusitified the action through a pending court case, despite the guidelines already being on hold. The letter did not lay out new guidelines, meaning states can choose their policies.

On February 28 Trump signed a measure to block an Obama-era regulation that would have prevented about 75,000 people with mental disorders from purchasing firearms. In an effort to curb gun violence, the Obama administration asked the Social Security Administration to disclose information about people with certain mental illnesses to the gun background system.

In the third week of February the Department of Homeland Security released Trump's plans to aggressively enforce deportation policies regardless of the severity of an immigrant's criminal history. The guidelines kicked off a nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Trump signed two bills promoting women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). One required NASA to encourage young women to study STEM fields and pursue careers that will help advance science and space exploration. The second required the National Science Foundation to encourage its entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to work in the commercial world.

Author: Cristina Burack

Against that historical backdrop the number and ferocity of Donald Trump's unprovoked verbal attacks during the presidential campaign against Chancellor Merkel were truly unprecedented.

"I always thought Merkel was, like, this great leader," he said in an interview in October 2015 about her decision to allow more than a million refugees into the country. "What she's done in Germany is insane," he added and predicted: "They're going to have riots in Germany."

Ruining Germany

Two months later, after Time magazine made Merkel its person of the year Trump took to Twitter to declare, that the outlet picked the person "who is ruining Germany".

In March 2016, referring to the Cologne New Year's Eve assaultson hundreds of women, Trump during a rally in Iowa again predicted unrest in Germany and lashed out against Merkel. "The German people are going to riot. The German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman [Angela Merkel]. I don't know what the hell she is thinking."

In June last year during remarks about Brexit, Trump mused about Germans emigrating: "These are people that were very proud Germans that were beyond belief, they thought the greatest that there ever was and now they're talking about leaving Germany."

But then in September 2016 after having repeatedly savaged Merkel for months, Trump suddenly heaped praise on the Chancellor, albeit with some key qualifiers.

A Merkel person

"Well, I think Merkel is a really great world leader," he said in an interview. "But I was very disappointed that, when she, this move with the whole thing on immigration, I think it's a big problem and really, you know, to look at what she's done in the last year and a half.I was always a Merkel person.I thought really fantastic. But I think she made a very tragic mistake a year and a half ago."

Unlike, some of her cabinet members, Merkel kept her cool and did not directly counter Trump's criticism during the presidential election campaign.

Instead, Merkel waited until after his election to deliver a message to the new president.

Chancellor Merkel had a noteworthy congratulatory message for President-elect Trump

Public lecture

In a remarkable statement from the chancellery congratulating him on his victory she went on to offer Trump close cooperation based on shared values which she then explicitly listed one by one: "democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political position".

While this may seem tame in comparison to Trump's attacks on her, for a German Chancellor to not just offer cooperation under specified terms to a US president, but to do it in way that could be perceived as lecturing him on Western values, was as stark a rebuke of an incoming US president as could be expected of Merkel or any German chancellor.

No screaming

And Merkel did not stop there,but since also came out strongly against President Trump's travel ban against several predominantly Muslim nations. "The necessary and decisive battle against terrorism does not in any way justify putting groups of certain people under general suspicion, in this case people of Muslim belief or of a certain origin,"she said in January in Berlin.

Keeping theirprior rhetorical struggle in mind, it seems fair to describe the first Trump-Merkel meeting as potentially loaded. It also makes clear why an experienced US foreign policy analyst was only half-joking when he recently commented that he considered italready a success if Trump behaved himself and the get-together ended without screaming.

Link:
Things Donald Trump said about Angela Merkel and vice versa - Deutsche Welle

WASHINGTON With the election of President Donald Trump and their long-awaited attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act finally at hand, Republicans find themselves facing peril of historic proportions.

Lets call it their Jimmy Carter problem.

After the outsider peanut farmer-turned-politician from Georgia won the White House in 1976s post-Watergate election, he took office with near historic majorities in both chambers ofCongress 61 Democrats in the Senate and a 292 to 143 edge in the House.

Democrats had high hopes for the optimistic, famously toothy embodiment of the New South. What they got was underwhelming a leader who feuded with Congress, and scored some foreign policy successes, but never managed to pull off anything especially ambitious.

He got some stuff through, but it was certainly not another Great Society, said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer, referring to achievements of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who also presided over one-party government. I think Democrats feel he wasted an opportunity that existed, and that helped open the door to the right.

There were certainly economic and international crises beyond Carters control, but his failure to achieve big-ticket success paved the way for former President Ronald Reagans revolution from which liberals still havent entirely recovered.

Now, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his fellow Republicans can see the historic writing on the wall with their own outsider reality-TV-star-turned-politician occupying the White House. Its the first time since former President George W. Bushs second election that the Republicans are starting a fresh four-year presidential term with unified control of government.

And theyve got something big they want to do. Or, more accurately, that they want to undo. Their signature promise for the last six years has been to repeal Obamacare.

Even as the GOP proposal to deliver on that promise got Ishtar level pans from the left, right and experts, Ryan and many of his colleagues made clear this past week how vital they think it is to propel their deconstructive blueprint into law.

Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act should come first, before the GOP can pursue any other cherished goals. He offered an especially stark explanation in a radio interview Friday with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

I do agree that this is momentum-killing, the speaker said. If we dont do this and reduce or get rid of the trillion-dollar tax increases in Obamacare, that just puts tax reform a trillion dollars further out of our reach. So theres a lot that rides on this, not to mention just the schedule.

While Ryan cast it in practical terms, other Republicans were blunter, and recognized a global importance to their and Trumps agenda in revoking former President Barack Obamas signature achievement.

This is so basic to what we have promised over the last few elections, said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the second ranking Republican in the Senate. I think if we fail to keep this promise then I think it makes the rest of our work much, much more difficult to accomplish.

Failing to accomplish goals has electoral consequences. Historian Zelizer points to former President Bill Clintons first term, when he managed to boost taxes but failed utterly at health care reform, and the country answered with the Republican revolution ofNewt Gingrich, who was speaker from 1995 to 1999.

A similar tale was told when Bush won his second term in 2004.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

His big push was for privatizing Social Security, Zelizer said. That falls apart, he gets nowhere on immigration reform and he, too, is not able to really capitalize on united government, and, in that case re-election, which is in some ways even a better situation.

The wave election that that hit the nation in 2006 washed away the GOP majorities.

Republicans arent eager to entertain the possibility that they could fail to repeal and replace Obamacare, but they do see electoral doom in failure.

They are not willing to acknowledge that Americans might grow angry at the GOP for even pursuing a plan that, as it stands now, would cut health care for millions and dramatically raise costs for millions more if it passes.

But they are highly cognizant of how the more zealous portions of their electoral base will react.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) sees the need to satisfy that contingent as so important that his side would be best off simply repealing Obamacare and worrying about the replacement later.

We have to repeal it, and if we dont repeal it, were going to split with our base, he said. Thats a dangerous political thing to do.

Republicans have been talking for six years that were going to repeal and replace, and thats got to be the top category cause we may only get one chance, said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

In the House, where conservatives make up an even more powerful block, some lawmakers believe passing a hard-right health care plan is so pressing a requirement that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should take the extraordinary step of rewriting Senate rules to end the filibuster.

Arizona Rep. Trent Franks (R) told The Huffington Post he doesnt especially like the House replacement plan, but he was inclined to support it because hes sure a more conservative alternative cannot get through a filibuster by Democrats.

The current GOP plan is being advanced as a budgetary measure under a process known as reconciliation. Such measures cannot be filibustered. But they are meant to deal only with budgetary matters. While the GOP has tried to craft their reconciliation plan as broadly as possible, there are still policy issues that cannot be addressed with a budget bill.

Franks said that leaves the House leaders in the terrible position of trying to satisfy a potentially furious GOP base and Senate rules that actually grant the Democratic minority power. This is like trying to walk a tightrope in an earthquake. Its just an untenable circumstance for them, he said.

Failure even if Senate Democrats cause it playing by the rules could doom his party, Franks added.

I think that Senate rule has the potential of putting both houses in the hands of Democrats next time, he said, referring to the 2018 elections.

Franks argued the consequences make it essential for the GOP to do whatever it can.

It just means whether or not Republicans are going to take this last best hope theyve had in a long time, and at least give the American people a snapshot of what Republican policy looks like, he said. Or if were going to become victims of our own traditions and send the Republican ideals down the corridors of history.

NBC via Getty Images

Its not just the Republican representatives and senators who would suffer under such failure.

Trump would also find himself in a precarious spot, even if his voters heap blame on Congress. Because members of Congress will blame Trump if he cant use the bully pulpit to help them succeed with legislation.

I think a lot of Republicans figured he was just going to blitz them with lots of legislation, and he hasnt. And its not even clear the White House is working on it, Zelizer said. I think theyre comfortable using executive action and causing a lot of chaos.

But that is not what the GOP lawmakers need. They need success, not some Trump-concocted blend of rhetorical and executive mayhem.

If nothing happens on ACA, if its just one big disaster, this whole effort in the next few weeks, it will soften or weaken Republican support on Capitol Hill for the president, Zelizer said.

If Republicans cannot count on Trump, the president may no longer be able to rely on the people who are holding back Democratic demands for probes of everything from his still ill-understood ties to Russia to his many and conflicted business entanglements.

This president could start entering a danger zone where members of his own party are willing to go after him, Zelizer said.

Just imagine an election in 2018 where Republicans have angered their base by failing to pass an Obamacare replacement, and their president is facing bipartisan investigations on multiple fronts.

Republicans certainly can, and the result doesnt leave them and their man remembered in history at all like previous titans of unified government an LBJ, JFK or FDR.

Instead, its more like JEC, and who even knows Jimmy Carters middle name?

Read the original post:
Donald Trump And The GOP Are Facing A Jimmy Carter Problem - Huffington Post

The momentum of far-right populist Geert Wilders has been slipping. Even if he were to win, there are obstacles to his taking over outright leadership of this NATO nation. Wilders' platform is a fun-house mirror of Trump and adviser Stephen Bannon's darkest views -- pushing the bar on all Muslim immigration, shuttering all mosques (Wilders calls them "Nazi temples") and asylum centers, banning the Quran and taking the Netherlands out of the European Union in a move dubbed Nexit, following Britain's ill-considered Brexit vote last year. For some time, the Dutch politician found himself with apparently unstoppable momentum. After all, it was Wilders who last April began tweeting, "MAKE THE NETHERLANDS GREAT AGAIN!" Wilders has expended some effort trying to emulate Trump's rise in the United States. He even attended the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and in response to Trump's shocking November victory, Wilders tweeted, "The people are taking their country back. So will we."

These kinds of remarks have enlarged his political appeal, or at least acceptability, to a large number of voters. Now, however, as Trump sinks more deeply into the morass of governing, many may be having some second thoughts.

Much of today's European political spectrum is less a straight right-left line. It's an oval track with candidates running around it in the direction of the popular will at the moment, with both extremes connecting as they round the circle. The challenge for any political candidate, but especially those at the extremes, is to snatch the checkered flag before someone else crosses the finish line going the other way.

Hopefully, Dutch voters and the politicians they finally send to The Hague will have the good sense to assemble a government without any of the extremes that seem so seductive in the short run, but pose an existential threat to Europe and the peace of democracies. And if Trump continues to surprise and horrify Europeans in the weeks to come, that good sense could sweep across the continent, burying the populist wave before it has a chance to take charge of a major nation.

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump casts long shadow over Dutch election - CNN

This post originally appeared on You Might Also Like, a new site about life, politics, and decisions.

The election of Donald Trump has come as a shock to me. Even though I live in Vienna and am not directly affected by Trumps presidency in the same way my American friends and family are, it is extremely painful to watch how this man is turning a whole country and its values upside down. Every day, my life begins and ends with Trump. In the morning I reach sleepy-eyed for my phone while laying still in bed and read about the latest media scandal. When I go to bed I open the New York Times app one more time to check what has happened.

For a while, I tried abstaining from the news, but I am proud to admit that I have found something that works much better: weight lifting.

A couple of months ago I started a crossfit-similar exercise regimen that is mainly about lifting weights. Kettlebells, bar-bells, push-ups with 10 pounds laying on top of you. It sounds really hard, because it is.

In my first group lesson, I almost blacked out from the fast repetition of exercises, followed by the feeling of throwing up. When the lesson was over and everyone high-fived each other, tears were rolling down my cheeks a bodily response of relief. But it got better very quickly.

I have never been particularly interested in sports before, and besides the occasional yoga class, they never played a big role in my life. Sports basically meant YouTube Yoga or YouTube Pilates for me. I once started a 30 Day YouTube Yoga Challenge and it took me eight days to get past Day 4.

However, I am now completely in love with weight lifting. Not just because it is exercise for my body, but it gives me the piece of mind in a way that yoga never could. Weight lifting turns my brain in a blank slate. Nothing (including sleeping or watching TV) can reach that same level of calm for me than 30 squats with a 26 pound kettle bell in my hands.

While my body is preoccupied with exercise repetitions and, lets face it, constant pain, my brain can relax. Whereas in yoga groups you are encouraged to think about your day and let it all go, weight lifting doesnt even get you to this contemplative point. With stretching and staying in the downward facing dog for what feels like hours, my brain was still able to think about Trumps Muslim Ban or his latest attack on the news media. Yoga might as well have been as well be called Meditating with Trump.

Strength training has been associated with increasing brain function in multiple studies. It is said to slow dementia and increase long-term memory function by 10 percent. It also lowers stress, which can accumulate easily these days just by reading the news. Exercise promotes the production of hormones such as norepinephrine, while at the same time lowering cortisol levels significantly.

While Cardio and other forms of exercise still leave some room for you to think about current events, strength training doesnt. Instead of thinking about alternative facts, or immigration policies, the only things I can really think or rather feel about are WATER!, TOWEL!, ONE MORE!, all in capital letters and exclamation marks.

Since Trump got elected, many people have taken up new habits to personally deal with the constant news, be it going to events, stress eating, or obsessively caring about their nails like Jeanne Vaccaro, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University. While this might feel like an overtly personal act of self-care it is also a means to be stronger in order to face the new reality head on. It means dealing with it, instead of hiding from it. Dealing with it also means being active to counteract what is happening: be it going to the womens march, tweeting or having a very long and complicated conversation with your relative or friend.

Weight lifting helps me with all of that and I am only getting stronger every day.

The rest is here:
Donald Trump Is Making Me Toned - Huffington Post

Then he won, in epic fashion. His populist message swept the Rust Belt out from under Democrats and suddenly the victim of purported rigging was headed to the White House.

Again, no evidence was given, but Trump felt strongly enough to demand an investigation into the matter.

Now, people influential with the most powerful man in the world are publicly raising concerns that there is a cabal of entrenched bureaucrats hidden in the bowels of the nation's government who are intent on his political demise.

But the idea of a deep state, similar to the idea of a rigged election or a fraudulent vote count, could cause a more fundamental threat: Each presupposes the government is actually controlled by hidden hands that ignore the law without compunction. It assumes these government actors wantonly ignore the law. That's a potentially destabilizing and explosive idea. So is, however, the notion that Russians helped install the president. And that's something Democrats have taken to pushing even though there's no evidence that Russian meddling had any effect on the November results.

With all these swirling accusations in the ether, discussion of a "deep state" -- formerly the obsession of conspiracy theorists and scholars of Egyptian and Turkish politics and the subject of spy novels and TV shows like "Scandal" -- is creeping into the American mainstream.

Trump himself has not spoken publicly about the term. But he did accuse political holdovers of trying to undermine his presidency by leaking information about his campaign's communications with Russians.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer offered his take on the idea during Friday's White House press briefing.

"I think that there's no question when you have eight years of one party in office, there are people who stay in government and continue to espouse the agenda of the previous administration," Spicer said. "So I don't think it should come as any surprise there are people that burrowed into government during eight years of the last administration and may have believed in that agenda and may continue to seek it. I don't think that should come as a surprise."

Spicer dismissed the idea that the CIA is working to identify those people and remove them from government.

That would be against the law, by the way; the CIA is barred from conducting "internal security functions" inside the US.

But that didn't help squash the conspiracy theory this week following documents released by WikiLeaks suggesting the CIA knows how to tap into smart phones and TVs.

Of course, neither the CIA nor any other spy agency would be able to lawfully use those tools on an American citizen under the law without first getting a FISA warrant.

Neither would former President Barack Obama have been able to wiretap candidate Trump, as the President suggested recently without offering any evidence. At least not under the law. For starters, the President doesn't conduct investigations. Second, his government would need a warrant to monitor conversations between Americans. There's some gray area when it comes to communications with foreign nationals.

Trump opponents, it should be noted, have been no less paranoid about what the new president will do, and have taken a number of actions to protect data on climate change, for example, gathered by the federal government.

But none of this has stopped the idea of a "deep state" from taking hold.

According to CNN's most recent reporting, the former President is perturbed by Trump's wiretapping allegations, but he's trying hard to bite his tongue -- save for a statement from his spokesman -- and give the new administration room.

View original post here:
How Donald Trump could delegitimize his own government - CNN