monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

My fear is growing that the electoral removal of Trump is going to leave a huge vacuum in news media content. Daily drama, conflict, sex, spies, corruption - with Trump gone, how do commercial media entities (many on a long trend towards insolvency) fill their pages and draw viewers? How do they cope with a boring, efficient, hard working, honest administration? This worries me a lot, actually.

his freak-outs on twitter have been truly funny lately

But I'm not sure of your meaning.

BREAKING: A Federal Judge today blocked President Trumps’s attempt to roll back the birth control mandate in ObamaCare, as Trump tried to take away contraception coverage.

This is a big win for women’s rights!

Another loss for Trump and Pence.

This is a big win for women’s rights!

A federal judge in California blocked a Trump administration rule on contraception just hours before it was to go into effect Monday. It would have allowed virtually any employer to refuse to cover workers' birth control by citing religious or moral objections.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr. ruled the policy would cause harm to the Democratic states suing over the rules, and he issued an order staying the rules from going into effect while the lawsuit proceeds. His temporary block is limited to just the 13 states plus the District of Columbia involved in the lawsuit. However it’s possible that a court in Pennsylvania, considering a similar request for an injunction, could issue a broader national order.

The new rules mark the Trump administration's second attempt to narrow the Obamacare-related requirement that employers must provide FDA-approved contraception in the employee health plan at no cost. The first attempt was halted in 2017 after courts found the administration tried to make the change without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in. Houses of worship and closely-held private companies with religious objections are currently exempted from the birth control coverage mandate; the Trump administration is seeking to make the exemptions much broader.

“The law couldn’t be more clear — employers have no business interfering in women’s healthcare decisions,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement Sunday evening. “Today’s court ruling stops another attempt by the Trump Administration to trample on women’s access to basic reproductive care."

Louise Melling, ACLU deputy legal director, called it "a good day when a court stops this administration from sanctioning discrimination under the guise of religion or morality.” Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen, said, “It’s time that politicians recognize birth control as health care and that women, in consultation with doctors, decide what contraception we receive — not our employers."

https://www.womensmarch.com/2019/

(Reuters) - More U.S. coal-fired power plants were shut in President Donald Trump’s first two years than were retired in the whole of Barack Obama’s first term, despite the Republican’s efforts to prop up the industry to keep a campaign promise to coal-mining states.

In total, more than 23,400 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired generation were shut in 2017-2018 versus 14,900 MW in 2009-2012, according to data from Reuters and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Trump has tried to roll back rules on climate change and the environment adopted during the Obama administration to fulfill pledges to voters in states like West Virginia and Wyoming.

But the second highest year for coal shutdowns was in Trump’s second year, 2018, at around 14,500 megawatts, following a peak at about 17,700 megawatts in 2015 under Obama.

One megawatt can power about 1,000 U.S. homes.

The number of U.S. coal plants has continued to decline every year since coal capacity peaked at just over 317,400 MW in 2011, and is expected to keep falling as consumers demand power from cleaner and less expensive sources of energy.

Cheap natural gas and the rising use of renewable power like solar and wind have kept electric prices relatively low for years, making it uneconomic for generators to keep investing in older coal and nuclear plants.

Generators said they plan to shut around 8,422 MW of coal-fired power and 1,500 MW of nuclear in 2019, while adding 10,900 MW of wind, 8,200 MW of solar and 7,500 MW of gas, according to Reuters and EIA data.

The predictions come from estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters and U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

For a graphic on U.S. coal shutdowns, see: tmsnrt.rs/2H1GQIO.

Since taking office in January 2017, the Trump administration has announced its intention to leave the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and is relaxing Obama-era rules on emissions from power plants as it seeks to boost domestic production of oil, gas and coal.

U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, spiked in 2018 after falling for the previous three years as cold weather spurred gas demand for heating and the booming economy pushed planes and trucks to guzzle fuel, according to a study by Rhodium Group, an independent research group.

After falling to 5,144 million tonnes in 2017, the lowest since 1992, the EIA projected U.S. energy-related carbon emissions will rise to 5,299 million tonnes in 2018.

“There will be a limit to what increasingly cheap renewable power and continuously cheap natural gas can deliver with respect to emissions reductions,” said John Larsen, a director at Rhodium Group who leads the firm’s power sector research, noting the rising use of gas to produce power as coal plants shut. Natural gas emits about half the carbon as coal.

The Trump administration has also tried to slow the retirement of coal and nuclear plants through a directive in 2017 from Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize the aging units because they make the electric grid more resilient.

That plan was bashed by advocates for gas, renewable power and consumers and unanimously rejected by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), led by former Chairman Kevin McIntyre. The plan could resurface now that Trump has a chance to replace McIntyre, who died on Jan. 2.

As the government shutdown — which is centered around Donald Trump’s demand to receive funding to build a “border wall,” which he promised his supporters during his presidential campaign — drags into its fourth week with no end apparently in sight, many of those same “base” Trump voters are turning against him. An analysis by CNN shows that his approval ratings have dropped to new, historic lows.

A new CNN/SSRS poll released on Sunday shows, Trump’s approval rating sits at just 37 percent with a whopping disapproval rating of 57 percent — numbers that would themselves be alarming. However, these figures will be of special concern to Trump. According to CNN’s analysis of data from the poll, “the increase in disapproval for the President comes primarily among whites without college degrees, 45% of whom approve and 47% disapprove, marking the first time his approval rating with this group has been underwater in CNN polling since February 2018.”

(...)

A senior member of the Saudi royal family has warned against a US troop withdrawal from Syria.

Prince Turki al-Faisal told the BBC the action would have a negative impact, further entrenching Iran, Russia and the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

US President Donald Trump announced in December that it was time to bring US troops home from Syria.

Prince Turki was speaking just before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a visit to Riyadh.

Mr Pompeo is on a tour of the Middle East, and has already visited Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain.

WASHINGTON — President Trump threatened Turkey on Sunday with harsh economic sanctions if it attacks Kurdish forces in Syria after American troops withdraw from the country in the coming months.

“Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter, suggesting that there would be a 20-mile safe zone around the group after American forces leave. He added, “Likewise, do not want the Kurds to provoke Turkey.”

Mr. Trump’s tweets marked the first public threat toward Turkey, a NATO ally, over the Kurds and seemed to offer a blanket of protection for the group, a band of American-backed militias that the Turkish government sees as terrorists.

Quote:

for the same reasons as Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary.

The last three of these candidates won the popular vote.