"reviewing policies" for subpoenaing the press.

AG Jeff Sessions, citing leaks, says he's "reviewing policies" for subpoenaing the press. "They cannot place lives at risk with impunity."



https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/893492478774521857

Donald Trump, Youre Sued!

FFRF’s new ad:

https://twitter.com/FFRF/status/893221654087823360

HOW RUSSIA IS USING LINKEDIN AS A TOOL OF WAR AGAINST ITS U.S. ENEMIES

One night in mid-March, Alan Malcher, a British military veteran, dropped into the Queen’s Arms, a working-class pub in north London. He took a seat at the bar and ordered his customary pint of Foster’s. Within a few minutes, a stranger sidled up, ordered a drink and started a conversation. He soon brought up Russian President Vladimir Putin and began saying positive things about the Moscow-backed separatist civil war in Ukraine.

“He was going on about Putin being a strong leader,” Malcher recalls. “Somebody to admire.” The stranger’s comments, delivered with a thick Slavic accent, made Malcher’s security antennae vibrate: He had recently joined a Washington, D.C.–based think tank involved in combatting Russia’s stealthy infiltration of American social media. So when the stranger made passing reference to Malcher’s army service, he felt a twinge of apprehension. “There’s no way he could have known that except via LinkedIn,” Malcher says, referencing the professional online networking site where he and other critics of Moscow had been active in international affairs discussion groups. An expert in information warfare, Malcher reasoned that the Kremlin had dispatched the stranger to the Queen’s Arms with a message: We know everything about you. Watch your step.

http://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-bots-linkedin-facebook-trump-clinton-kremlin-critics-poison-war-645696

These are Sean Hannity's advertisers - Act with your pocketbook

Border Patrol Ordered to Block Congressmen During Travel Ban

In the first hours of the travel ban, Trump administration officials stiff-armed Congress, treated lawyer calls like ‘protests,’ and shared photos among themselves of protesters.

On the chaotic day the Trump administration’s travel ban went into effect, high-level Homeland Security officials directed their staff at airports around the country to stiff-arm members of Congress and treat lawyers with deep suspicion.
Members of Congress say they’re shocked by the orders, uncovered in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from The Daily Beast and The James Madison Project, both of which were represented by the law office of Mark S. Zaid.

“I’m extremely troubled that CBP [Customs and Border Protection] employees would be instructed by superiors to ignore Congressional representatives trying to do their job, especially under such circumstances,” said Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. “We suspected as much at the time, but it’s jarring to see it in black and white. I’ll be seeking more information from CBP on this matter.”

A CBP official wrote in an email on Jan. 28 that the agency’s employees were forbidden from speaking to members of Congress.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/border-patrol-ordered-to-block-congressmen-during-travel-ban

Stephen Icabod Crane Miller cited the Center for Immigration Studies

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is a think tank that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has "been part of a broad-based and well-planned effort to attack immigration in all forms" even though it now seeks -- and has largely attained -- more mainstream credentials.[1]

It bills itself as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization"[2] and testified before Congress almost 100 times between 1995 and 2009.[1] According to its website, CIS is "the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States." CIS states that its vision of America is "pro-immigrant, low-immigration," seeking "fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted."[2] But according to the SPLC, "the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked."[1] CIS is part of the John Tanton Network, the anti-immigrant "empire of organizations" created by, or connected to, population-control advocate and nativist John Tanton.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Immigration_Studies

NAACP issues first-ever travel advisory for a state

and it’s Missouri

NAACP officials say their recent travel advisory for Missouri is the first that the civil rights group has issued for any state.

But the warning follows a recent trend of similar alerts issued by other groups for vulnerable people around the United States.

The travel advisory, circulated in June by the Missouri NAACP and recently taken up by the national organization, comes after travel alerts began appearing in recent years in light of police shootings in the U.S. and ahead of immigration legislation in Texas and Arizona.

The Missouri travel advisory is the first time an NAACP conference has ever made one state the subject of a warning about discrimination and racist attacks, a spokesman for the national organization said Tuesday.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article164851802.html

Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray Announce Health Care Committee Hearings

WASHINGTON, August 1, 2017 — Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today released the following statement:

“This committee will hold hearings beginning the week of September 4th on the actions Congress should take to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market so that Americans will be able to buy insurance at affordable prices in the year 2018. We will hear from state insurance commissioners, patients, governors, health care experts and insurance companies. Committee staff will begin this week working with all of our committee members to prepare for these hearings and discussions.”

https://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&id=96EE81A9-C0F7-4238-BDF6-5F43472CBE37

Gulf Coast Environmental Group Sues Plastic Company

The nonprofit San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and an environmental activist are suing to stop Formosa Plastics from discharging plastic pellets into nearby bays and estuaries.

For the last year and a half, Bobby Lindsey and other volunteers with the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper have collected more than 1,600 clusters of BB-sized plastic pellets from the shorelines of Lavaca and Matagorda bays. Formosa Plastics, an offshoot of a Taiwanese plastics company that operates an 1,800-acre petrochemical complex on Lavaca Bay, produces the transparent polyethylene and polypropylene pellets, which can be used to make toys and Tupperware. But the lightweight pellets often blow away during transport within the facility and end up floating in the bays.

https://www.texasobserver.org/gulf-coast-environmental-group-sues-plastic-company-after-slow-response-from-tceq/

Florida voters cancel their own registration

During a recent 20-day period, 1,715 Florida voters took themselves off the registration rolls.

The 117 percent spike in cancellations over the same period last year came as news spread of President Donald Trump's fraud commission and its request for voter data from all 50 states.

Did the request for voter information trigger the cancellations?

While the increase suggests a correlation, regular maintenance of the voting rolls, a routine required by state law and unrelated to the federal commission, might also explain the increase.

Here's what we do know: On June 28, Trump's official request for voter information, made by the commission's vice chairman, Kris Kobach, sought the names, addresses, birth dates, political parties, electoral participation histories and last four digits of the voter's Social Security number of every registered voter in the country.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-voters-cancel-their-own-registration-is-trumps-fraud-commission/2332036