Conservatives flock to CPAC to chart agenda under Trump

Byron York on significance of Trump's scheduled trip to CPAC

For the last eight years, conservatives used their signature annual gathering to blast the Obama administration and plot a Republican takeover. Now, the GOP is in charge -- and this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference is the movement’s first big chance since President Trump’s victory to hone their agenda.
“The conservative movement has elected a Republican president,” American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp said Wednesday, at the start of the annual conference, which his group sponsors. “It’s not so much now about complaining about President Obama’s agenda as it is about what we’ll do with political power and the responsibility to get the economy moving.”
Leaders are hoping to use the conference to strategize about what they can accomplish now that Republicans control Capitol Hill and the White House and to work to better articulate their values at a time when the very definition of conservatism has seemed to waver.
The conference at National Harbor, just outside Washington, D.C., will feature a host of lawmakers and officials -- starting with top White House advisers on Thursday afternoon, followed by Vice President Pence on Thursday evening and President Trump on Friday morning.
But much of the buzz around the four-day event has centered on CPAC organizers pulling the speaking slot of “alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, after the release of an audio tape in which he made what Schlapp called “disgusting” comments.
Yiannopoulos seems on the year-old tape to defend adults having sex with minors. Yiannopoulos apologized this week for the comments and said he had been sexually abused as a teen.
Schlapp said Wednesday that CPAC invited Yiannopoulos because the backlash he faced for his college talks were part of a large, chilling effect regarding free speech on campus.
“We understand the alt-right, but it has no voice in conservativism,” Schlapp said. “Bigotry has no voice in conservativism.”
The flap highlighted tensions between traditional conservatives and the alt-right, which helped boost Trump’s bid.
The Republican president, with his threats to void or renegotiate international trade deals and his interest in a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure package, is not exactly a prototype conservative.
But Schlapp said conservatives hope to hear him say, “I know you all did a lot to get me elected,” and perhaps after the four-day event better understand “what they care about.”
The attendance of Trump, the first president since Ronald Reagan to visit CPAC in a first term, has indeed brought some energy to the 44-year-old event.
But other scheduled speakers and events -- including the speech by Pence and a one-on-one Thursday between White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trump strategist Steve Bannon -- are also attracting a lot of interest.
Bannon and Priebus are reportedly involved in a White House power struggle but say they get along.
Yiannopoulos had worked for Bannon at Breitbart News before Bannon stepped down and Yiannopoulos resigned in the wake of the scandal.
The event concludes Saturday with the annual CPAC straw poll, an early indication of which potential White House candidates have  conservative support.

Revised 'extreme vetting' order drops language rejecting Syrian refugees, official says

President Donald Trump's revised immigration executive order will drop language indefinitely suspending acceptance of Syrian refugees by U.S. authorities, a senior administration official told Fox News Wendesday.
The new order, which Trump is expected to sign next week, will also add language exempting legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, from a travel ban in a move the administration hopes will remove any reasonable grounds for a legal challenge.

Trump's prior "extreme vetting" order temporarily suspended all travel to the U.S. for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. A federal judge in Washington state halted enforcement of the order and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it.
The official said that new language in the revised order will make clear that the intent of the action is to "temporarily block the admission of people with no prior status in the U.S. who are currently overseas until a program of extreme vetting can be put in place."
The White House believes that new order will satisy the courts because it is "grounded in existing security determinations," the official said.
The official told Fox News that it is likely that certain classes of visa holders currently in the U.S. or who have been in the U.S. but are currently abroad will be exempted as well. This could include certain student or other education-related visas as well as work permits.
The new order would direct a temporary suspension of admission of all refugees while revised screening meansures are put into place, the official added.
The new order does implement a temporary visa ban for travelers from the same seven countries as the previous executive order: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The revised order will also mandate a 50 percent reduction in refugee admissions for 2017 to just 50,000.  According to the White House, approximately 35,000 refugees have already been allowed into the country this year, leaving only about 15,000 slots left for the remainder of the year once the refugee admission program resumes.

Voters' support of ObamaCare rising, despite Republican push

A new poll released Wednesday adds a new element for congressional Republicans to consider about their repeal-and-replace approach to former-President Obama’s cornerstone legislation: more American voters appear to be support the law.
According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, there is an even split between registered voters who support the law and those who oppose it. Currently, 45 percent approve of the legislation compared to a poll back in January—before President Trump took office—that showed 41 percent of voters approved of the bill.
VIDEO: UPROAR AT TOWN HALLS AIMED AT REPUBLICANS OVER OBAMACARE
Kyle Dropp, the co-founder of Morning Consult, told Politico that the closer ObamaCare comes to the chopping block, its weekly poll “has shown an uptick in the law’s popularity.”
The only item in the poll that remained unpopular was the individual mandate.
Trump, who said during his campaign that he will replace the law with “something far better,” has tried to calm critics who say Republicans are divided on the issue.
Trump has been edging away from the promise to quickly eliminate the entire law. Still, annulling its taxes would be a partial victory and is irresistible for many GOP lawmakers and the conservative voters at the core of their support.
"We should do full repeal," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leading House conservative. "And full repeal means not taking the taxes" from people.
DR. MARC SIEGEL'S ADVICE FOR THE OBAMACARE TRANSITION
Despite the law’s apparent increase in popularity, just last week the CEO of Aetna said in an interview that the law is in a “death spiral” because younger, healthier people have dropped out while premiums continue to climb.
Under the 2010 law, people are required to have health coverage or risk fines from the IRS -- a penalty usually deducted from a taxpayer's refund. That underlying requirement remains on the books, and taxpayers are still legally obligated to comply, the IRS said.
But the agency is changing its approach to enforcement. Originally, the IRS had planned to start rejecting returns this year if a taxpayer failed to indicate whether he or she had coverage. Now the IRS says it will keep processing such returns, as it has in the past.
Many of the law's supporters consider the coverage requirement essential for nudging younger, healthy people into the insurance pool to keep premiums in check.

Fake News Cartoons

Sean Hannity: Trump frustrates 'fake news' media at every turn

President Trump is once again showing he is no longer going to put up with the out-of-control left-wing media bias. And this weekend in Florida, the president once again took direct aim at these corrupt news organizations.
“The dishonest media, which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend they have them, they make them up in many cases,” Trump said over the weekend. “And they've been calling us wrong now for two years. They don't get it, but they're starting to get it, I can tell you that. They've become a big part of the problem. They are part of the corrupt system.
Trump’s broadside continued as he labeled the press an “enemy of the people” and rallied his supporters directly – instead of allowing his words to be filtered through the abusively biased media.
“We are not going to let the fake news tell us what to do, how to live or what to believe,” he said to thunderous applause. “We are free and independent people, and we will make our own choices.”
The alt-left propaganda media responded in a pathetically predictable fashion.
“Trump's attacks on the American press as enemies of the American people are more treacherous than Richard Nixon's attacks on the press,” journalist and author Carl Bernstein told CNN. “Nixon's attacks on the press were largely in private. There's a history of what ‘enemy of the people’ … means as used by dictators and authoritarians, including Stalin, including Hitler. And I'm not about to say anything about comparing Hitler and Trump, but it's a demagogue's statement.”
See what he did there? And CNN’s Chris Cuomo had an ominous warning about the possible consequences of Trump calling out the media.
“Somebody's going to get hurt,” Cuomo said. “It's just a question of time, because just like in every other dynamic in life, if you take somebody's who's got a legitimate reason to be upset in the first place, and you pump them up and it starts to become a call to action ... somebody's going to get hurt.”
Finally, ABC’s White House correspondent Jonathan Karl tried to wrap the abusively biased alt-left propaganda media in the Constitution.
“As long as American democracy remains healthy, there will be reporters willing to pursue the truth, even if that means incurring the wrath of the most powerful person in the world,” Karl said. “A free press isn't the enemy of America, it's a big part of what makes America great.”
We’re all for a free press, but how about an honest one that covers President Trump fairly? Remember how WikiLeaks exposed the rampant, rampant collusion between the press and the Clinton campaign? Allowing Democratic Party officials to edit their stories and giving Hillary Clinton debate questions in advance?  They had a literal stake in the election.
These left-wing news outlets thought they'd be able to stop Donald Trump from becoming president but now, instead of admitting they were wrong, they have now doubled down on their attacks against President Trump.
On election night, as the realization crept in that Donald Trump would be the next president, it was like a funeral at every one of these networks. ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who hosted a debate, actually cried.
According to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it wasn’t just Raddatz who was reduced to tears by the results of a free and fair election.
“America is crying tonight,” he said. “I'm not sure how much of America, but a very, very significant portion. And I mean literally crying. I've gotten texts from a college campus about a dorm that's just in tears.”
Fast-forward to today and the abusively biased media has not changed and has not learned anything. They have not apologized for their collusion or for their dishonest reporting. Even worse, they are ignoring President Trump's accomplishments in just 30 days. They are never going to tell the American people the truth.
So far, President Trump has ordered federal agencies to ease the burden of ObamaCare, withdrawn the U.S. from the flawed Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, implemented a government hiring freeze and banned aid that helped foreign countries provide abortions. He has issued five executive actions advancing the Keystone and the Dakota Access pipelines, which will create jobs and lead to energy independence. He has announced construction of a border wall, ordered federal funding stripped from sanctuary cities, issued executive actions on extreme vetting and ordered rebuilding of our military.
Trump has ordered up a plan to defeat ISIS, instituted a five-year lobbying ban for administration officials and nominated an originalist to the Supreme Court in Judge Neil Gorsuch. He signed a House joint resolution to help the coal industry get back into business, sanctioned Iran over its ballistic missile program, negotiated lower prices on F-35 fighter jets and Air Force One and met with top CEOs to incentivize them to create jobs here.
President Trump signed executive orders to protect police officers and target drug cartels. He launched a council for the advancement of women entrepreneurs. He has called or met with more than 30 foreign leaders so far and put together a first-class cabinet.
The news media are at war with the president because their little egos are bruised, and they have been exposed. And they're waging this battle by focusing in on superfluous issues, citing unnamed sources. They are basically throwing around allegations in the hope something may stick one day, and they go out there and report breathlessly about whatever the tweet is of the day.
The mainstream media's audience is not you, the American people. They are not the forgotten men and women in poverty, on food stamps, out of the labor force, who can't buy a house and struggle to put food on the table and send their children to good schools. Out-of-touch liberals know nothing about you, nothing about your problems, don't seem to care about the millions more in poverty, on food stamps and out of work, the people that are struggling.
That's why they didn't think that Donald Trump could win. It's why they can't for the life of them understand why he is connecting with the American people.  And it is why President Trump calls them for what they are: Purveyors of fake news.
Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," Feb. 20, 2017

Trump would be willing to remove Bannon from National Security Council

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that if President Donald Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser wanted to remove chief strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council’s principals committee, the president would “take that under serious consideration.”
“The president has made clear to him he’s got full authority to structure the national security team the way he wants,” Mr. Spicer said of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, whom Mr. Trump appointed Monday as his new national security adviser. Mr. Spicer made the remarks in the daily White House press briefing.
When asked if Gen. McMaster’s control over his team would extend to control of the principals committee and the potential removal of the chief strategist, Mr. Spicer said that Gen. McMaster “would come to the president and make that recommendation, but the president would take that under high—you know, serious consideration.”
Mr. Spicer added that in meetings with people for the position of national security adviser over the weekend, “The president made it very clear with [Gen. McMaster] and the other candidates that they had 100% control and authority over the national security committee.”
Gen. McMaster hasn’t indicated any changes he would like to make regarding the National Security Council.
Mr. Spicer said that Gen. McMaster, currently a three-star lieutenant general, would remain on active duty while serving as national security adviser. As such, if he retains his three-star rank, his appointment would be subject to Senate confirmation, according to a statement from a Senate Armed Services Committee aide. If he moves down a notch to a two-star major general, he wouldn’t be subject to Senate confirmation, the aide said.
Mr. Trump last month took the unusual step of adding Mr. Bannon, a former media and financial executive who was an architect of the president’s campaign strategy, to the National Security Council’s principals committee while downgrading the status of the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The move—which meant Mr. Bannon would be invited to all council meetings—drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, who questioned whether Mr. Bannon’s addition would insert domestic politics into national-security decision-making.

DHS secretary orders immigration agent hiring surge, end to 'catch-and-release'

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly moved Tuesday to implement a host of immigration enforcement changes ordered by President Trump, directing agency heads to hire thousands more officers, end so-called “catch-and-release” policies and begin work on the president’s promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“It is in the national interest of the United States to prevent criminals and criminal organizations from destabilizing border security,” Kelly wrote in one of two memos released Tuesday by the department.
The memos follow up on Trump’s related executive actions from January and, at their heart, aim to toughen enforcement by expanding the categories of illegal immigrants targeted for deportation.
The changes would spare so-called "dreamers." On a conference call with reporters, a DHS official stressed that the directives would not affect Obama-era protections for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and others given a reprieve in 2014. But outside those exemptions, Kelly wrote that DHS “no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
A DHS official said the agencies are “going back to our traditional roots” on enforcement. 
The memos cover a sprawling set of initiatives including:

• Prioritizing criminal illegal immigrants and others for deportation, including those convicted or charged with “any criminal offense,” or who have “abused” any public welfare program 
• Expanding the 287(g) program, which allows participating local officers to act as immigration agents – and had been rolled back under the Obama administration
• Starting the planning, design and construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall
• Hiring 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and officers
• Hiring 5,000 Border Patrol agents  
• Ending “catch-and-release” policies under which illegal immigrants subject to deportation potentially are allowed to “abscond” and fail to appear at removal hearings

It’s unclear what timelines the secretary is setting for some of these objectives, and what budgetary and other constraints the department and its myriad agencies will face. In pursuing an end to “catch-and-release,” one memo called for a plan with the Justice Department to “surge” immigration judges and asylum officers to handle additional cases.
While congressional Republicans have vowed to work with Trump to fund the front-end costs associated with his promised border wall, the same memo also hints at future efforts to potentially use money otherwise meant for Mexico – following on Trump’s repeated campaign vow to make Mexico pay for the wall. The secretary called for “identifying and quantifying” sources of aid to Mexico, without saying in the memo how that information might be used.
Mexican officials repeatedly have said they will not pay for a border barrier. DHS said it has identified initial locations to build a wall where current fencing is not effective, near El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Ariz.; and El Centro, Calif.
The DHS directives come as the Trump White House continues to work on rewriting its controversial executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program as well as travel from seven mostly Muslim countries. The order was put on hold by a federal court, and Trump’s team is said to be working on a new measure.
The directives also come as the Trump administration faces criticism from Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups for recent ICE raids of illegal immigrants.
DHS officials on Tuesday’s conference call stressed that they are operating under existing law and once again shot down an apparently erroneous news report from last week claiming National Guard troops could be utilized to round up illegal immigrants. That will not happen, an official said.
“We’re going to treat everyone humanely and with dignity, but we are going to execute the laws of the United States,” a DHS official said on the conference call.

Trump administration working on new transgender bathroom directive

The Trump administration is working to undo an Obama-era directive that allows students to use school restrooms that corresponds with their gender identity, the White House said Tuesday.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not go into specifics on the new set of guidelines being prepared by the Justice Department, but said Trump has long held that such matters should be left to the states-- not the federal government-- to decide.
“I think that all you have to do is look at what the president's view has been for a long time, that this is not something the federal government should be involved in, this is a states' rights issue," Spicer said.
The Washington Post obtained a draft of the letter to the nation’s schools, which is planned to be released Wednesday.
The White House plans to say that they are rolling back the directive allowing transgender students access to restrooms and participate in school athletics according to their gender identity and not their gender at birth.
The letter also states that the directive “has given rise to significant litigation” and administrators, parents and students “struggled” to understand and implement the Obama administration’s guidance.
The White House will insist that schools must protect all students and the undoing of the directive “does not diminish the protections" available to all students.
Trump was a vocal critic about the Obama administration’s guidance during the 2016 campaign.
Trump said in a phone interview on “Fox & Friends” in May 2016 that the directive was becoming a “massive story” despite it only affecting a “tiny, tiny” percentage of the population.
"It's a new issue and right now, I just don't have an opinion. I’d like to see the states make that decision," Trump said at the time.
Trump was also outspoken about North Carolina passing a law on bathroom use by transgender people.
"I love North Carolina, and they have a law, and it's a law that, you know, unfortunately is causing them some problems," Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an April 2016 interview. "And I fully understand that they want to go through, but they are losing business, and they are having people come out against."
"I think that local communities and states should make the decision," he went on to say. "And I feel very strongly about that. The federal government should not be involved."
Fifteen states have explicit protections for transgender students, and many individual school districts have adopted policies that recognize students on the basis of their gender identity, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign.
Only one state-- North Carolina-- has enacted a law restricting students' bathroom access to their sex at birth. Other states are considering following suit.
Vanita Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Obama, blasted the Trump administration's attempt to alter the guidelines.
"To cloak this in federalism ignores the vital and historic role that federal law plays in ensuring that all children, (including LGBT students) are able to attend school free from discrimination," Gupta said in a statement.
Even without Obama's guidelines, federal law — called Title IX — would still prohibit discrimination against students based on their gender or sexual orientation, the National Center for Transgender Equality said. Rescinding those directives would put children in harm's way, the group said.
"Such clear action directed at children would be a brazen and shameless attack on hundreds of thousands of young Americans who must already defend themselves against schoolyard bullies, but are ill-equipped to fight bullies on the floors of their state legislatures and in the White House," NCTE said in a statement.
But Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said students, parents and teachers should work out "win-win" solutions at the local level, such as equipping schools with single-occupancy restrooms or locker rooms or allowing students to access the faculty lounge.
"We can find a way in which the privacy and safety of transgender students is respected while also respecting the privacy and safety of all other students," Anderson said.