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Sat, Jan. 28, 2017: Trump sets 5-year and lifetime lobbying ban for officials; Gives JCOS 30 days to develop plan to defeat ISIS; Begins restructuring Security Council

President Donald Trump acted Saturday to fulfill a key portion of his pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington, banning administration officials from ever lobbying the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government and imposing a separate five-year ban on other lobbying.

Administration officials described the bans as historic in scope. But it was not immediately clear how either one would be enforced. Continue reading “Sat, Jan. 28, 2017: Trump sets 5-year and lifetime lobbying ban for officials; Gives JCOS 30 days to develop plan to defeat ISIS; Begins restructuring Security Council”

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Sat, Jan. 28, 2017: Trump and Putin discuss stabilizing ties

US President Donald Trump may be having his biggest day of diplomacy yet, speaking by phone Saturday with five world leaders — most significantly Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Angela Merkel.

It was Trump’s first phone conversation with the Russian President since his inauguration last week.

CNN’s Matthew Chance in Moscow said a Kremlin summary of the phone call talked about stabilizing the relationship between the two nations and several other subjects. Some of the other issues included restoring trade ties, international terrorism, the situations in Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula, and the coordination of military action against ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria.

The White House called the one-hour chat a significant start to improving a relationship “in need of repair.”

–CNN

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Plan to reduce funding to United Nations delayed

The Trump administration is delaying its plans to issue two executive orders that would reduce funding to the United Nations and begin a process to review and potentially cancel certain multilateral treaties, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.

Both draft orders were submitted to the National Security Council for approval, but the council’s advisers were granted less than an hour and a half to review them, though this process normally takes weeks. Federal agencies were granted similarly brief windows for review.

Federal officials that were asked to review the documents balked at their contents, warning they required legal vetting.

The draft orders are now being withheld for a more complete review by a number of agencies, including the State Department, which is expected to begin as early as next week.

Click here to read more from The New York Times

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Sat, Jan. 28, 2016: Trump has phone calls with Russian, German, and French leaders

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to speak by telephone on Saturday, the White House has confirmed.

It will be the first time the two leaders talk since Trump took office on Jan. 20.

Trump will also be speaking with the leaders of France and Germany in separate calls, according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

–The Hill

Before he speaks with Putin, Trump will hold call Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Later, he will speak with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

–CNN

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Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump signs executive order to keep ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ out of U.S.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that indefinitely suspends admissions for Syrian refugees and limits the flow of other refugees into the United States by instituting what the President has called “extreme vetting” of immigrants.

Titled “Protection Of The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States,” the executive order would start to make good on Trump’s promise to tighten borders and halt certain refugees from entering the United States.
The text of the order — in a break from drafts that had been circulating earlier this week — drops a longtime Trump campaign pledge to establish safe zones in Syria to give Syrian nationals displaced by the ongoing civil war in the country a place to relocate.

The order bars all persons from certain terror-prone countries from entering the United States for 90 days and suspends the US Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days until it is reinstated “only for nationals of countries for whom” members of Trump’s Cabinet deem can be properly vetted. Continue reading “Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump signs executive order to keep ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ out of U.S.”

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Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump attends swearing-in of Defense Sec. Gen. James Mattis

​​​​President Donald Trump on Friday said he had authorized newly minted Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “override” him on decisions related to whether the US employed torture.

Trump, an unabashed supporter of so-called enhanced-interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, noted that Mattis “does not necessarily believe in torture or waterboarding or however you want to define it.”

“I don’t necessarily agree, but I will tell you that he will override because I am giving him that power,” Trump said. “He is an expert. He is highly respected. He is the general’s general.” Continue reading “Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump attends swearing-in of Defense Sec. Gen. James Mattis”

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Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump meets with UK Prime Minister at White House

President Trump put the “special relationship” with the United Kingdom on full display Friday, hosting Prime Minister Theresa May for cordial meetings at the White House while highlighting a partnership built from their converging political fortunes.

The arrival of the British prime minister as the first foreign leader to visit the new president was a clear signal of the pre-eminence of the alliance.

“The special relationship between our two counties has been one of the greatest forces in history for justice and peace — and, by the way, my mother was born in Scotland,” Trump told reporters after the hourlong meeting in the Oval Office. Continue reading “Fri, Jan. 27, 2017: Trump meets with UK Prime Minister at White House”