Trump appoint attorney general

The Trump administration on Thursday gave the go-ahead to new oil-drilling leases on federal land in California, mostly around petroleum-rich Bakersfield but also in less-obvious spots in the Sierra foothills, such as near Yosemite National Park. The move, which covers eight counties in Central California, comes as President Trump pushes ahead with an agenda of increased fossil fuel development and follows a decision in October to open up parts of the Bay Area and Central Coast to potential drilling. Under the plan advanced Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will offer new oil and gas leases across more than 1 million acres between Bakersfield and Santa Barbara. The leases will be the first made available on federal land in the region in five years. A lawsuit filed by environmental groups had halted leasing until the impacts of fracking could be better studied. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting oil and gas by using high-pressure water, … [Read more...] about Trump administration OKs leasing for new oil drilling in California — again

Matt Lauer looks on during the NBC News Commander-in-Chief Forum. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: NBC’s disastrous presidential forum, allegations of a Trump pay-to-play, and Fox News without Roger Ailes. Before Wednesday night’s presidential forum had even ended, reporters and fact-checkers were picking apart Matt Lauer’s failure to challenge Donald Trump’s false statements and attacking the parity of his questions. What should the moderators of the upcoming debates take from this? The moderator of the first presidential debate on September 26 is Lester Holt — like Matt Lauer, an NBC News anchor. If he arrives onstage as poorly prepared as Lauer, and behaves as boorishly toward Hillary Clinton as Lauer, the first debate, likely to be the most-watched presidential debate in the history of broadcasting, … [Read more...] about Matt Lauer’s Gift to Donald Trump

It’s my party now. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images The first three nights of the Republican convention turned in a halfhearted and largely unsuccessful effort to draw Donald Trump closer to the party he conquered. Here are speeches about the bills from Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell he will sign, the right-wing judges he will appoint, not to mention testimonial from women and minorities he has never harassed or offended. The final night is the one in which Trump fully consummated his conquest. Trump’s acceptance speech is one of the most memorable and important ones ever delivered at a convention, because it reflects a conscious effort to alter the ideological orientation of its party. The speech bears the heavy imprint of its reported author, Stephen Miller, a very smart, renegade Republican staffer who advocates what he calls “nation-state populism.” Pat Buchanan, a sympathetic observer from a previous era, has described the ideology somewhat more … [Read more...] about Donald Trump Is Bidding to Transform the GOP Into a White-Identity-Politics Party

Photo-Illustration: Photo: Michael Krinke Photography/Getty Images If you began to pay attention to politics starting any time later than the early 1970s, you know political conventions consist of nothing more than a four-day-long infomercial, where each party is afforded a rare chance to transmit its message to the public unfiltered. For a variety of reasons, the Donald Trump campaign has made poor use of this opportunity. Some of the causes of its failure were routine — on night one, angry, rambling general Michael Flynn blathered too long and pushed the smooth, compelling Joni Ernst out of the prime-time slot. Then this small disaster was eclipsed by the much larger disaster of Melania Trump’s speech having turned out to include plagiarized passages. Then the campaign compounded the problem by insisting on lying and changing its account, so that the news media — given an actual news story to uncover — blotted out the intended message with wall-to-wall … [Read more...] about Donald Trump Is Bad at Scripted Television and Also Bad at Nationalism

Michael Avenatti, the TV-friendly attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, has never exactly enjoyed popularity among political journalists. But his favor has dipped even further amid new allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that he dumped into the news cycle Sunday night. Even liberal journalists aren’t buying what he’s selling.“On the heels of the New Yorker story, Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels, jumped into the fray with some utterly uncorroborated allegations,” wrote Ryan Grim in an newsletter emailed to readers. He’s the Washington Bureau Chief for The Intercept and formerly an editor at the left-leaning Huffington Post.”I would suggest ignoring him until he comes forward with real evidence, which he promises is coming in the next few days.” But as Glenn Close‘s psychotic character tells her one-time lover Michael Douglass in Fatal Attraction, “I’m not going to be ignored.” … [Read more...] about Journalists Trash Porn Star Attorney For His Dubious Kavanaugh Allegations