Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Cartoons

Stuart Varney: All of the endless leaks sure looks like an attempt to reverse last year's election

Stuart Varney

Programming note: Watch “Varney & Co.” weekdays on the Fox Business Channel from 9 – 12pm ET.

Moments from now Attorney General Jeff Sessions takes to the podium to deliver a progress report on the hunt for leakers.

Good. We hope he's made a lot of progress. We hope he and General Kelly can plug these leaks, because they endanger the country, and the ability of our elected president to pursue the policies that got him elected.
The latest leak is an outrage. The Washington Post has published transcripts of President Trump's phone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. This is the deliberate under-mining of foreign policy, diplomacy and national security. An obvious attempt to embarrass our president. And the post did this because “we have the right to know"?  Nonsense. They just hate him and they want to end his presidency now.
Part of the problem here, is that the federal government still has a large number of high level staffers held over from the Obama years. The democrats won't confirm their replacements, so the Trump administration is stuck with some disloyal bureaucrats!
When you see endless leaks, all designed to undermine Trump's ability to govern, you have to think it’s organized. It sure looks like an attempt to reverse last year's election.
You'll hear from the attorney general right here.
Adapted from Stuart Varney’s “My Take” on Thursday August 4, 2017.
Stuart Varney joined FOX Business Network (FBN) as an anchor in 2007 and is the host of "Varney & Co." (9-11 AM/ET) on weekdays. Click here for more information about Stuart Varney. 

Chicago to sue DOJ over sanctuary cities policy

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (WHY IS THIS PIECE OF SHIT STILL IN OFFICE?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the city plans to sue the U.S. Department of Justice over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, specifically over the so-called sanctuary cities program.

Emanuel made the disclosure Friday, while being interviewed for a Chicago radio program. The full interview is scheduled to air Sunday evening on WLS radio in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The mayor, a Democrat who previously served as a congressman and as White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said the federal lawsuit will be filed Monday.
The suit will claim that it’s illegal for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withhold federal Byrne grants from cities the Trump administration believes aren’t cooperating enough with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the mayor said.
Chicago this year expects to receive $3.2 million from the Byrne grant program, money mostly used to buy police vehicles and other equipment, the Tribune reported. The grants are named for Edward Byrne, a New York City police officer who was murdered in 1988.
“We are not going to be between picking our values of who we are as a welcoming city, and strengthening our police department,” Emanuel said in the interview.
In filing the suit, Emanuel is likely trying to court support from Chicago’s Latinos, who are wary of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as well as gain clout among other big-city Democratic mayors as they try to block Trump initiatives, the newspaper reported.
The Justice Department declined to comment on Emanuel’s comments Friday.
On Thursday, Fox News reported that Sessions threatened to withhold anti-crime funding from four cities – Baltimore; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Stockton and San Bernardino, California – if they did not begin to cooperate more thoroughly with federal immigration officers.

No bad behavior please: Grammys cleans up act to meet China demands

Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga

Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga

A record signed by representatives of the Recording Academy, Bravo Entertainment and China Music Vision spins on a player during a ceremony in Beijing marking a Chinese partnership to create the Grammy Festival China, August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Grammys is looking to break into China, but it will have to do so without the help of some of its top stars – Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga among others – after it pledged to bring only well-behaved artists to meet Chinese censors’ demands.
Lady Gaga, plus Bjork and Bon Jovi, are blocked in China after they met or expressed support for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. China recently blacklisted Canadian star Bieber, citing bad behavior.
China’s huge consumer base is a magnet for Hollywood studios to theme park operators, but entry in the market comes with strings attached. The country has long censored imported film and music and is now clamping down hard on audiovisual content online.
The Recording Academy, which runs The Grammys, pledged on Thursday in Beijing to respect China’s media curbs as it plans to launch a tour in China in 2018 featuring its award-winning artists, or nominees, performing live shows.
Lady Gaga has six Grammy Award wins. Bieber, a Grammy winner nominated seven times, apologized to fans on Thursday after he abruptly canceled the rest of his world tour and accidentally hit a photographer with his truck.
“If there are restrictions and things in that nature, we have to be respectful,” Neil Portnow, president and chief executive of The Recording Academy, told Reuters in Beijing.
China has launched a campaign to cleanse the entertainment sector of content it deems inappropriate and unhealthy, a vague term the authorities frequently use to justify censorship of politically sensitive topics.
“We will promote artists with a positive and healthy image,” said Steven Fock, chief executive of music events organizer Bravo Entertainment, one of The Recording Academy’s partners for the live show tour along with China Music Vision.
At a time of slowing domestic growth, Chinese audiences have become increasingly important to the U.S. entertainment industry. A livestream in China last year of the Grammy Awards drew nearly 11 million viewers.
In contrast, Grammy viewership dipped slightly for the latest show in February, from nearly 25 million last year in the United States. In January, The Recording Academy said it would build its first overseas Grammy Museum in China.
Portnow added he hoped curbs on some artists would be lifted eventually, and vowed to push China to clamp down on piracy after making progress in intellectual property protection.
(Reporting by Pei Li; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Neil Fullick)

The WH Postpones an Announcement on Trade Action Against China

President Trump was expected to sign a memorandum Friday targeting China’s trade practices, and directing his trade representative to launch an investigation into China’s alleged intellectual property theft.
However, the White House said the move has been postponed, but did not give a reason or a new date.
The memo would allow the president to unilaterally impose tariffs and other trade restrictions in order to protect U.S. industries.
President Trump has been weighing a crackdown on China as Beijing fails to take his advice to put more pressure on North Korea.

A man pushes a stroller past a magazine advertisement featuring U.S. President Donald Trump at a news stand in Shanghai, China. U.S. media reported Wednesday, Aug 2, 2017 that the administration of President Donald Trump is considering using rarely invoked U.S. trade laws to compel China to crack down on theft of copyrights, patents and other intellectual property and fend off technology sharing demands from Beijing. (Chinatopix Via AP, File)

No let-up likely in Trump trade war talk

Talk of trade war looks here to stay for the time being, especially as data over the coming week seems more likely than not to aggravate U.S. President Donald Trump’s gripes with China and Germany.
While global trade has bubbled back into life after a lean few years, so too have fears of protectionism, leaving financial markets wary in an otherwise improving global economy.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said last month it was a cause of “great concern” that the United States could start a trade war with Europe, while tension between Washington and Beijing has escalated.
In the last week U.S. senators from both sides of the house urged Trump to stand up to China as he prepares to launch an inquiry into its intellectual property and trade practices in coming days.
At the moment, the working assumption for most investors is that international cooperation will win the day – as the International Monetary Fund pushed for earlier this year – before a full-blown trade war starts.
“Do I think that the U.S. will be dumb enough to go ahead and put in place a series of measures which will act as an obstacle to trade with these countries? I suspect not,” said Peter Dixon, global financial economist at Commerzbank in London.
The United States posted a much smaller goods trade deficit than expected for June, helped by an improvement in exports.
But this may be eclipsed by figures from China and Germany due in coming days.
BUMPY ROAD
China’s goods trade surplus for July, due on Tuesday, looks set to top $46 billion, according to a Reuters poll of economists. That would be the second highest this year.
Although the surplus has fallen sharply year on year over the first half of 2017, against the United States it has increased 6.5 percent.
“We see a bumpy road ahead for the trade relationship between the two countries”, said Yang Zhao, Nomura’s chief China economist. “But it is unlikely that the two nations will enter a true trade war.”
Part of the reason for China’s bigger surplus with the U.S. this year is the better performance of the world’s no. 1 economy, Zhao said.
German figures also due on Tuesday are expected to show its goods trade surplus widened too, to 21 billion euros ($24.7 billion) in June from 20.3 billion in May, according to the Reuters poll.
Germany had the world’s biggest current account surplus in 2016 at $289 billion and has been under pressure to boost domestic demand to lessen its reliance on exports – not least from European Union peers that want to raise their own competitiveness.
Berlin can point to the fact its trade surplus has actually fallen 2 percent in the 12 months to May compared with the same period a year ago, but that pace of progress may not be enough to spare it criticism from the United States.
“I suspect it’s a lot of rhetoric at the moment,” said Dixon at Commerzbank. “But that doesn’t mean to say we can dismiss the risk.”
(This story corrects time reference in third paragraph)