monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Nearly a decade ago, Republicans launched REDMAP, an audacious bid to win key statehouses and governorships in order to give themselves control over the redistricting process that followed the 2010 Census, so they could gerrymander district lines in their favor.

The project succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, giving them a major edge in successive election cycles.

Now, they’re looking to do it again.

The GOP has launched its first ever national group focused exclusively on how congressional and state legislative maps are drawn, with an eye on the next round of redistricting, which will follow the 2020 Census. And they have help from deep-pocketed, state-based super PACs devoted to holding onto their gains.

President Donald Trump reportedly received a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin as a gift in 2013, and its contents remain a mystery.

The gift supposedly arrived after Trump put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, after which he hoped he would be able to construct a Trump Tower in the Russian capital.

Trump cooperated with a prominent Russian oligarch on the development deal, until it was put in jeopardy by sanctions the US placed on Russia in 2014.

Trump's associates had reportedly been trying to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow well into Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

The Interior Department is spending $139,000 for new doors for Secretary Ryan Zinke's office suite, according to records posted online.

The work was recommended by Interior career facilities and security officials, an agency spokeswoman said, not by Zinke.

"The secretary was not aware of this contract but agrees that this is a lot of money for demo, install, materials, and labor," Heather Swift, the spokeswoman, said in a statement.

With the Embassy Move to Jerusalem, a Biblical Trump?

...with an eye on the next round of redistricting, which will follow the 2020 Census...

It's been quite a journey for Donald Trump on North Korea. The American president announced in May that he'd be "honored" to talk to Kim Jong-un. Five months later, Trump insisted that his own chief diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man." Talking to North Korea, he added, wouldn't work.

And five months after that, the White House acknowledged that the North Korean dictator had invited the American president for direct negotiations -- and that Donald Trump had accepted.

Or put another way, Trump has agreed to give Kim Jong-un exactly what he wants. North Korean leaders have sought this kind of meeting for decades because it would necessarily elevate the rogue state: it would show the world that North Korea's leader can be treated as an equal by the Leader of the Free World. Previous American presidents - from both parties -- have left open the possibility of such engagement, but only as a reward for meaningful and tangible results.

Now the idea of California being the source of all evil is hardly novel in the annals of conservative agitprop, at least since the GOP lost its grip on the state in the 21st century. With the state’s economy booming and the state’s budget in balance, it’s not as easy as it used to be to claim the place is one big dystopia. But on the cultural front, there’s always an audience for those who claim California is a hellscape of hippies and sodomites and snooty Hollywood and Silicon Valley elites and illegal aliens, all plotting to destroy the American Dream.

The vast majority (83%) of Americans support requiring comprehensive background checks for all gun purchasers including private sales between two individuals. This includes 68% who strongly support this and 15% who somewhat support it. Backing for this proposal comes from 91% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 72% of Republicans. There is also widespread support (65%) for establishing a national gun ownership database to register all guns in the country, with over half (52%) of the public strongly supporting this and 13% somewhat supporting it. Majorities of Democrats (84%) and independents (64%) back this proposal, while Republicans (45%) are more lukewarm.

The most recent figures show that 60,000 people a year are killed with guns every year in the United States. The most alarming piece of information I ran across in years is that the NRA (gun manufacturers association) has used their army of crooked, paid off politicians to block any study of the murders, suicides, and accidental shootings caused by guns. When someone is killed in a car accident the CDC gathers the information and studies why the accident took place. Many improvements have been made by cars manufacturers because of the studies of car accidents.
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“But getting the data has long been a challenge markedly for political reasons: a 1996 amendment to a spending bill---lobbied for by the NRA---that forbade the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using government money for research that “may be used to advocate or promote gun control.

From an Internet article entitled: “The Ultimate Guide to American Gun Control Laws”

Source: CityLab.

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That law needs to be repealed immediately if we cannot even gather adequate statistics about the problem we will never be able to solve the problem. If death by a gun in United States needs to be thoroughly studied and the information held in a central clearinghouse. The fact that the NRA wants to sweep 60,000 deaths a year under the rug shows they don’t want to solve the problem they want to hide it. This law was piggy backed on a spending bill so many who voted for the spending bill did not realize that they were also voting for a bill to prevent government money from being used to even study gun violence.

That is why you cannot go on the internet and search for the number of people killed with assault weapons in the last twenty years. The NRA blocked the information from being gathered.

Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Russia-backed online “trolls” flooded social media to try to block Mitt Romney from securing a top job in the incoming administration, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

...Several of the most popular [Russian troll] accounts slammed the former Massachusetts governor in late November and early December 2016, encouraging their tens of thousands of followers to take action.

The push came just as reports swirled that Mr. Romney could get the job, despite his frequent, harsh criticism of Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.

“No Romney for Secretary of State! #NeverRomney,” wrote the Twitter account USA_Gunslinger on Nov. 25, 2016, to its then more than 26,000 followers. Around that time, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Mr. Romney had been “nothing but awful” to Mr. Trump during the campaign, and tweeted that she was getting a “deluge” of negative comments about him from Trump loyalists.

“No Romney for Secretary of State! #NeverRomney,” wrote the Twitter account USA_Gunslinger on Nov. 25, 2016, to its then more than 26,000 followers. Around that time, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Mr. Romney had been “nothing but awful” to Mr. Trump during the campaign, and tweeted that she was getting a “deluge” of negative comments about him from Trump loyalists.

RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (CO-HOST): So is this a harmless Hollywood profile piece or does it say a lot more about the state of men in America?

PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): We're getting reaction from comedian and blogger Chad Prather. Chad, thank you. You are a proud alpha male, I know. Your hand is in your own pocket. What do you make of this?

CHAD PRATHER: My mind is blown on this thing. Can you believe this? I mean, where is culture going at this point? Why is there such a war on masculinity? There is. The worst thing you can be in America today is a white, heterosexual Christian male. There's an all-out war on people. So I don't understand why there is just such a -- just such a battle just to be masculine. Why is it -- and then you're offensive if you are. I mean, I'm going to have people who are going to get on here, they're going to see the little segment that we put on Twitter or whatever and they're going to say, "Oh my gosh, it's a guy that cowboy hat. What does he know?" Well, tonight you’ll probably eat meat and a guy in a cowboy hat probably raised that cow. So, you know, it's just -- it’s OK to be a man.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Well, and being masculine doesn't mean you can't be a gentleman. When I first met you, when you came on set I loved that you shook my hand and you tipped your hat just a little bit.

PRATHER: Didn’t I, though? Didn’t I?

CAMPOS-DUFFY: It was so cute. I'm married -- you won't believe this -- I'm married to a lumberjack, a professional lumberjack.

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): And congressman.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: And he happens to be a congressman. But I married him because he was a lumberjack. I don't think women really like that beta male thing. What’s up with that?

PRATHER: They don't. You know what women like? They like men. They like men that are men and men that are confident in being men. And I'm giving you permission right now, America, be masculine. If you're a man, there's no -- what's the word, misandry? We talk about misogyny, but what is the word, is it misandry? Where you have man haters. These people that are -- so men can't speak their mind. They can't make jokes. They can't burp and scratch themselves. It's OK, boys -- scratch yourselves.

[…]

DUFFY: Rachel Maddow's head is exploding after this segment.

PRATHER: She’s very masculine. Can I say that?