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Buried in the massive $1.3 trillion spending bill that Congress is considering this week are strict new punishments against Russia, in what lawmakers and aides say is a message to President Donald Trump to reconsider his relaxed posture toward Moscow.

The legislation, which Trump was always expected to sign, includes restrictions that bar many federal agencies from engaging financially or otherwise with the Kremlin and its backers on a number of fronts. Lawmakers from both parties viewed those provisions and others as an opportunity to enshrine new punishments against Vladimir Putin’s regime at a time whenthe Trump administration has taken heat for its refusal to immediately and fully implement mandatory sanctions and other punishments.

“Those [sanctions] were a good first step. But I do think that these newer sanctions hopefully put a little more bite to it. And frankly I think that’s a good thing,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Daily Beast. “The Russians are guilty of bad behavior all over the world. And so we shouldn’t be doing anything to encourage or condone that.”

The new measures come as the White House faces renewed criticism over its handling of Russia. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that the president, against the advice of his top aides, congratulated Putin on winning re-election to another six-year term. He also did not press Putin on election-meddling or on the nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom.

Multiple lawmakers and congressional sources from both parties said the new financial barriers aimed at punishing Russia are both robust and significant, and were crafted in light of Russia’s continued aggression in eastern Europe and the Middle East in addition to the likelihood that the Kremlin tries to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections.

Democrats pointed to Trump’s reluctance to publicly criticize Putin and speak out about Russia’s activities, and said it was necessary for Congress to step inwhenever possible to send the administration a message.

“With the appropriations bill, bipartisan majorities are once again sending the president tough new measures to push back on Russia and shore up our election system against future interference,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Daily Beast. “It’s time that the White House listens to Congress and uses the tools we’ve provided.”

The spending bill bars the use of federal funds for “enter[ing] into new contracts with, or new agreements for Federal assistance to, the Russian Federation,” and allocates $250 million to the Countering Russian Influence Fund—a 150 percent increase from last year. Additionally, it authorizes significant new sanctions against Russia over its actions in eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Their origin, though, remains a mystery. While lawmakers were unsure who exactly inserted those measures into the 2,232-page spending bill, they said it represented a broad point of agreement among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill in a policy area where Trump himself has, in their view, struggled.

“I think there is broad bipartisan concern that our president hasn’t been active in pushing back against Russian aggression—either its meddling in our last election and likely meddling in our next election, or its aggression toward its neighbors like Ukraine, Georgia and its interference in Syria,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told The Daily Beast.

Coons, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the language was “most likely added by senior senators who recognize that the Congress has acted forcefully and in a bipartisan way to demand sanctions and stronger action by the president and [we] have so far been largely disappointed. I think this is partly an effort of senior legislators from both parties to make progress on that.”

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) described the spending bill as a “wheelbarrow” of Congress’ priorities, and said he suspects the additional measures were included “in response to what’s been going on up here,” referring to mandatory sanctions against Russia that continue to receive bipartisan backing.

“Because it’s an omnibus appropriations bill, that’s the logical place for that type of language to be,” Isakson said.

Despite Trump’s apparent unwillingness to outwardly criticize Putin and Moscow’s election-meddling practices, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have credited the Trump administration for taking actions against the Kremlin including a new lethal defensive weapons sale to Ukraine’s military, which is defending itself against Russian-backed separatists.

The omnibus includes financial punishments against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned. The legislation also includes a five-page section titled “Countering Russian Influence and Aggression,” which outlines specification prohibitions on federal dollars going to the Russian government.

Additionally, federal agencies are barred from directing financial assistance toward countries that are supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The bill also restricts federal agencies from investing in Crimea or other areas that the U.S. believes are under illegal control by Russia, and requires Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to direct Americans sitting on international financial boards to vote against any measure that funds programs which violate “the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

More broadly, the legislation directs funds toward “supporting democracy programs” in Russia including Internet freedom. It also allocates $380 million to the Election Assistance Commission to help states and localities improve their election infrastructure to guard it against cyberattacks. The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a series of recommendations this week on election security as part of its Russia investigation.

“It is reassuring that at least in this bill, we still have a bipartisan consensus with regard to national security issues,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told The Daily Beast, speculating that Congress was aiming to “protect [Trump] from himself” by slipping in new punishments against Putin.

Trump bans most transgender Americans from serving in the military (The Hill)

Trump may have gotten his wall in the bill

During his remarks at the group’s winter meeting, Sessions praised black law enforcement officers, saying they were critical to the drop in the U.S. crime rate over the past 30 years.

Sessions said the drop in crime was due to more sophisticated policing and, “Better welcoming and participation in leadership and on the streets of our black police officers.”

But it wasn’t always that way, Sessions admitted.

“I remember real, raw discrimination in the hiring of police officers throughout the South particularly, it was unacceptable,” he said.

Sessions praised NOBLE’s members for efforts to encourage community policing and get to know the people they’re sworn to protect.

Sessions also touched on the issue of mass incarceration. He has been skeptical of calls for sentencing reform and Friday he explained some of his thinking on the issue.

“We're not here to see how many people we can lock up, that cannot be our goal,” he said. “Our goal must be to see how many people we can keep safe.”

Nearly a month after President Donald Trump ordered his attorney general to ban bump stocks, Jeff Sessions has finally announced a plan to follow through on that promise.

Sessions proposed legally recognizing “bump stocks” as “machine guns” on Friday. Since most machine guns are illegal in the United States, the change would effectively ban bump stocks, which channel semi-automatic firearms’ recoil into rapid fire, allowing them to spew bullets like automatic weapons.

“Since the day he took office, President Trump has had no higher priority than the safety of each and every American,” Sessions said in a statement. “After the senseless attack in Las Vegas, this proposed rule is a critical step in our effort to reduce the threat of gun violence that is in keeping with the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress.”

The call to ban bump stocks first broke out last October, after a gunman mutated his semi-automatic assault-style weapon with a fitted a bump stock and used it to kill at least 58 people at a Las Vegas concert last year. Trump, however, didn’t call for a ban on the accessories until Feb. 20, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. (The gunman in that massacre didn’t use a bump stock.)

Trump celebrated Sessions’ announcement on Twitter. “We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns,” he wrote. Banning the accessories is also a move that National Rifle Association (NRA) supports.

The day after a CNN interview with a former Playboy model who claims to have had a 10-month affair with her husband, first lady Melania Trump opted to leave President Donald Trump alone for the ride from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base.

The official White House schedule, released Thursday evening, stated the first couple would depart the White House together aboard Marine One en route to Joint Base Andrews, but Mrs. Trump did not appear beside her husband. CNN reached out to the first lady's communications office for an explanation or comment on the change in plan but did not receive a response.

any of those stories could have been stories in a different administration

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Thoughtful observers should suspect any historical narrative that paints the world in black and white. In Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), the Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman warns of predictable cognitive flaws that inhibit our ability to think rationally, including something called ‘the halo effect’:

The halo effect helps keep explanatory narratives simple and coherent by exaggerating the consistency of evaluations: good people do only good things and bad people are all bad … Inconsistencies reduce the ease of our thoughts and the clarity of our feelings.

(...)

Conservative and nationalist political leaders in the US and across Europe already incite fear with tales of the twin monsters of Islamic fundamentalism and illegal immigration. But not everyone believes that immigration is a terrible threat, and most Right-wing conservatives don’t think that Western countries are at risk of becoming theocratic states under Sharia law. Communism, on the other hand, provides the perfect new (old) enemy. If your main policy agenda is shoring up free-market capitalism, protecting the wealth of the superrich and dismantling what little is left of social safety nets, then it is useful to paint those who envision more redistributive politics as wild-eyed Marxists bent on the destruction of Western civilisation.

Thoughtful observers should suspect any historical narrative that paints the world in black and white.

Trump bans most transgender Americans from serving in the military

“Those [sanctions] were a good first step. But I do think that these newer sanctions hopefully put a little more bite to it. And frankly I think that’s a good thing,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Daily Beast. “The Russians are guilty of bad behavior all over the world. And so we shouldn’t be doing anything to encourage or condone that.”

Parkland activist David Hogg called out the media in a broadcast interview with Axios on Friday, March 23. Addressing the attention his fellow Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) survivors-turned-activists were given in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on February 14, David was critical of the lack of minority representation in media coverage.


When asked what the biggest mistake the media had made in covering the Parkland students's work, he told Axios, "Not giving black students a voice. My school is about 25% black, but the way we're covered doesn't reflect that." (According to the Broward County School District's website, around 40% of the students who attend schools in the district are black. Individual school statistics were not available for MSD on Broward County's website.)


There's a long history of black teenagers fighting for gun control as part of the Black Lives Matter movement's efforts to draw attention to policy brutality. Activists like Kenidra Woods, Nza-Ari Khepra, Clifton Kinnie, and Parkland student Nick Joseph have been working on the issue in Parkland, Chicago, and Ferguson, Missouri. And they have wisdom to share from their time as activists.