March 28, 2018, 2:45 PM
White House staffers view post-Hope Hicks era with trepidation
The reign of Hope Hicks, the unflappable White House communications director and the right side of President Trump's brain, comes to an end this week, leaving a communications team bitterly divided and an impetuous president increasingly isolated.
The enigmatic aide-de-camp who has earned the ear and trust of Mr. Trump -- and equally as important, his family -- bridged the gulf between the president and the rest of his political staffers, many of whom he has consistently viewed with skepticism throughout his presidency.
And for a president who spends much of his time fuming at cable television or at one staffer or another, from his various chiefs of staff to his national security advisers, Hicks has stood apart in that "he genuinely likes and respects her," a source close to the president said.
Staffers are approaching the post-Hicks era with trepidation, unsure what to expect in what they describe as a lawless White House featuring a president who thrives on chaos and resents authority, process and order. Hicks even used her standing to shield others from the wrath of Mr. Trump's explosive outbursts, sources inside the White House say.
"She's the glue to the entire place," a White House source said. "She helps keep the White House from fracturing. I don't think people realize what's about to happen once she leaves."
Ghosts of communications directors past don't bode well for the future communications director. Sean Spicer served as acting communications director twice, followed by Michael Dubke's short-lived stint. And then there was Anthony Scaramucci's history making, expletive-laced, 10-day spell in the position.
Which is why even in the toxic workplace that is the White House, the backbiting surrounding the heat to fill Hicks' shoes has taken staffers aback.
"Woof! This is insane," one White House staffer texted with a link to a Washington Examiner piece where unnamed sources slammed Tony Sayegh, a Treasury Department spokesman, who is in the running to replace Hicks. One of the accusations that sources called particularly cruel was that Sayegh manipulated and bullied staffers, particularly female staffers.
"Whoever attempted to plant that lie should feel ashamed. It's just an icky thing to do, particularly to someone as nice as Tony," a female Treasury source told CBS News.
"This ridiculous hit job on Tony Sayegh was obviously planted by someone competing for the job. This piece is 99% fake news," Arthur Schwartz, a publicist with ties to Trump's White House, tweeted.
Arthur Schwartz
✔
@ArthurSchwartz
This ridiculous hit job on Tony Sayegh was obviously planted by someone competing for the job. This piece is 99% fake news. https://twitter.com/emilyjashinsky/status/974686157802999808 …
6:40 AM - Mar 17, 2018
Another contender for the job, endorsed by chief of staff John Kelly, is director of strategic communications Mercedes "Mercy" Schlapp. Schlapp, viewed suspiciously as a traditionalist by original Trump campaign hands who've managed to survive the White House grind, raised eyebrows after a CNN article in February painted her as Hicks' "pinch hitter" during the messy fallout after allegations of domestic abuse against Rob Porter, Hicks' then-boyfriend, came out.
The tension between Hicks and Schlapp is apparent to staff, a White House official said. According to the official, the president is aware of Hicks' displeasure with Schlapp and what was perceived as her undermining of Hicks during a difficult period in order to elevate herself in the White House hierarchy.
But Hicks, in an effort to quell some of the ongoing drama, has not explicitly weighed in on who she thinks should replace her, White House officials added.
In the meantime, Kellyanne Conway is expected to serve as interim communications director, according to sources in and out of the White House.
As loyalists have thinned out since Mr. Trump assumed office, the president praised Conway last week, profusely complimenting her during a White House millennial panel.
"Has anybody ever heard of Kellyanne?" the president told the crowd. "She's become -- I told Ivanka this morning, you can take Kellyanne and put her right into the heart of the battle to somebody who the level of hatred back there is so incredible. Seven in the morning, the cameras are on, the lights are on, and she's there, and she'll just take them on. You know, great courage. Really great courage."
Conway has said previously that she turned down the job of communications director. But with the divide in the communications shop so rancorously entrenched, Conway's name has surfaced as someone who makes the most sense among existing staff.
"There's a lot of day-to-day work and paper pushing that goes into the job and I don't know if that's interesting to Kellyanne," a former White House staffer said. "But she certainly is, out of all the options, probably the best replacement for Hope because she does have that relationship with the president that is similar."
But the former White House official also points out that all of the jockeying and backbiting for the position seems to be missing the point.
"The job is already filled," the former White House official added. "It's filled by the president. And people who want to go to the mattresses for that position have to be real gluttons for punishment."
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Trump fires VA Secretary David Shulkin, nominates White House doctor as replacement - CBS News
March 28, 2018, 6:55 PM
Trump fires VA Secretary David Shulkin, nominates White House doctor as replacement
Last Updated Mar 28, 2018 7:29 PM EDT
Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin became the latest member of President Trump's cabinet to be terminated on Wednesday. Mr. Trump announced that he was replacing Shulkin in a series of tweets, and said he would nominate Adm. Ronny Jackson, who had been serving as the president's doctor, to replace him.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
14h
I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
....In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!
8:31 AM - Mar 29, 2018
"I appreciate the work of Dr. David Shulkin and the many great things we did together at Veterans Affairs, including the VA Accountability Act that he was helpful in getting passed," the president added in a statement. "He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service."
White House staffers view post-Hope Hicks era with trepidation
Shulkin's departure follows a series of blunders for the secretary of the already embattled VA, including reported insurgencies inside his own department to complications surrounding his improper use of travel expenses.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin seen on Captiol Hill on Tue., March 7, 2017. AP
After raising eyebrows for traveling to Europe last summer with his wife on the VA's dime, Shulkin faced numerous calls on Capitol Hill for his ouster. He was is one of five Trump cabinet officials whose travel practices were scrutinized by internal watchdogs.
In a 97-page report released last month, the VA's inspector general found that Shulkin made "misleading statements," "improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets" and turned an aide into a "personal travel concierge" to plan "high tea" and "Roman baths" at the request of Shulkin's wife.
Shulkin acknlowedged the "optics" of his travel arrangement were "not good" at a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs last month, but promised to reimburse the Treasury to follow the IG recommendations.
More recently, the secretary faced a new wave of backlash after a report from a VA watchdog released earlier this month slammed the department, blaming "failed leadership" and a "climate of complacency" for putting patients at risk at a Washington, D.C., VA hospital when Shulkin was under secretary. The watchdog said that at least three program offices had sufficient information to inform Shulkin of prevalent safety issues at the D.C. VA medical center.
Shulkin was an Obama administration holdover who was elevated to lead the department by Mr. Trump when he took office. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump frequently blasted what he called the "broken" VA system, referring to it as "probably the most incompetently run agency."
But Jackson is a bit of a mystery to many. In a statement, Sen. Johnny Isakson, the GOP chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, said he looks forward to "learning more" about Jackson.
"Dr. Shulkin has made a tremendous impact toward improving the lives of veterans during his time at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs," Isakson said in a statement. " He has been instrumental in all that we have accomplished in the last year, and I thank Dr. Shulkin for his dedicated service to our country and our veterans. I look forward to meeting Admiral Jackson and learning more about him."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the VA committee, said he will very closely scrutinize Jackson. Shulkin is the only Cabinet-level Trump appointee who received unanimous support from the Senate.
Richard Blumenthal
✔
@SenBlumenthal
13h
Replying to @SenBlumenthal
The chaos and dysfunction prevalent in this Administration must not spread to veterans’ services - which should be enhanced, not diminished.
Richard Blumenthal
✔
@SenBlumenthal
I will seriously scrutinize the President’s nominee, Ronny Jackson. Our nation’s veterans deserve the best.
10:01 AM - Mar 29, 2018
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she found Shulkin's dismissal troubling.
"The abrupt dismissal of Secretary Shulkin is a troubling step in the Trump Administration's ultimate goal of VA privatization," she said in a statement. "From day one of this administration, the president has openly encouraged and embraced Koch brothers-led forces as they work around Congress and behind closed doors to dismantle veterans' health care. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle must defend VA's mission as the chief coordinator, provider and advocate for those who have bravely served, and must remain vigilant against any effort to privatize VA."
Trump fires VA Secretary David Shulkin, nominates White House doctor as replacement
Last Updated Mar 28, 2018 7:29 PM EDT
Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin became the latest member of President Trump's cabinet to be terminated on Wednesday. Mr. Trump announced that he was replacing Shulkin in a series of tweets, and said he would nominate Adm. Ronny Jackson, who had been serving as the president's doctor, to replace him.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
14h
I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
....In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!
8:31 AM - Mar 29, 2018
"I appreciate the work of Dr. David Shulkin and the many great things we did together at Veterans Affairs, including the VA Accountability Act that he was helpful in getting passed," the president added in a statement. "He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service."
White House staffers view post-Hope Hicks era with trepidation
Shulkin's departure follows a series of blunders for the secretary of the already embattled VA, including reported insurgencies inside his own department to complications surrounding his improper use of travel expenses.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin seen on Captiol Hill on Tue., March 7, 2017. AP
After raising eyebrows for traveling to Europe last summer with his wife on the VA's dime, Shulkin faced numerous calls on Capitol Hill for his ouster. He was is one of five Trump cabinet officials whose travel practices were scrutinized by internal watchdogs.
In a 97-page report released last month, the VA's inspector general found that Shulkin made "misleading statements," "improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets" and turned an aide into a "personal travel concierge" to plan "high tea" and "Roman baths" at the request of Shulkin's wife.
Shulkin acknlowedged the "optics" of his travel arrangement were "not good" at a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs last month, but promised to reimburse the Treasury to follow the IG recommendations.
More recently, the secretary faced a new wave of backlash after a report from a VA watchdog released earlier this month slammed the department, blaming "failed leadership" and a "climate of complacency" for putting patients at risk at a Washington, D.C., VA hospital when Shulkin was under secretary. The watchdog said that at least three program offices had sufficient information to inform Shulkin of prevalent safety issues at the D.C. VA medical center.
Shulkin was an Obama administration holdover who was elevated to lead the department by Mr. Trump when he took office. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump frequently blasted what he called the "broken" VA system, referring to it as "probably the most incompetently run agency."
But Jackson is a bit of a mystery to many. In a statement, Sen. Johnny Isakson, the GOP chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, said he looks forward to "learning more" about Jackson.
"Dr. Shulkin has made a tremendous impact toward improving the lives of veterans during his time at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs," Isakson said in a statement. " He has been instrumental in all that we have accomplished in the last year, and I thank Dr. Shulkin for his dedicated service to our country and our veterans. I look forward to meeting Admiral Jackson and learning more about him."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the VA committee, said he will very closely scrutinize Jackson. Shulkin is the only Cabinet-level Trump appointee who received unanimous support from the Senate.
Richard Blumenthal
✔
@SenBlumenthal
13h
Replying to @SenBlumenthal
The chaos and dysfunction prevalent in this Administration must not spread to veterans’ services - which should be enhanced, not diminished.
Richard Blumenthal
✔
@SenBlumenthal
I will seriously scrutinize the President’s nominee, Ronny Jackson. Our nation’s veterans deserve the best.
10:01 AM - Mar 29, 2018
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she found Shulkin's dismissal troubling.
"The abrupt dismissal of Secretary Shulkin is a troubling step in the Trump Administration's ultimate goal of VA privatization," she said in a statement. "From day one of this administration, the president has openly encouraged and embraced Koch brothers-led forces as they work around Congress and behind closed doors to dismantle veterans' health care. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle must defend VA's mission as the chief coordinator, provider and advocate for those who have bravely served, and must remain vigilant against any effort to privatize VA."
Remington gets $75 million lifeline - CNN News
Remington gets $75 million lifeline
by Aaron Smith @AaronSmithCNN
March 28, 2018: 4:27 PM ET
A federal judge approved $75 million worth of loans to Remington so the company can keep making guns as it works through bankruptcy, according to court documents.
The firearms company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this week after more than 200 years in business.
The loan will allow Remington to continue pursuing a deal to cut as much as $620 million in debt. The company succumbed to a plunge in demand for guns that has dragged down the industry.
Remington has asked for loans totaling $338 million to be approved by April 29, but only a portion has been approved so far.
The $75 million loan approved on Tuesday is the "interim amount to get them through the interim period until they get to that final hearing on the additional amount that they're going to need," said Sarah Foss, legal analyst at Debtwire.
Founded in New York in 1816, Remington is one of the oldest gunmakers in America, and one of the most iconic gun brands in the world. The company, which is based in North Carolina, makes a variety of rifles, handguns and shotguns through its seven plants, including a sprawling brick factory in Ilion, NY, that's been churning out guns since the 1840s.
Gun and ammunition makers like Sturm Ruger (RGR), Vista Outdoor (VSTO)and American Outdoor Brands (AOBC), which owns the Smith and Wesson brand, have been hit hard by slumping sales during the administration of President Trump.
Gun companies experienced record sales during the Obama administration, driven by fears among gun consumers of more restrictive gun control. But these fears have largely faded, along with sales and profits, since the 2016 election of Trump, a Republican endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
Remington makes military semiautomatic rifles, including the Bushmaster used in the 2012 mass shooting that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
Remington has been sued by family members of Sandy Hook victims. Their wrongful death suit is pending with the Connecticut Supreme Court. Lawyers for the families say their suit is unaffected by the Chapter 11 filing.
The company is currently owned by Cerberus Capital Management, which plans to sh
by Aaron Smith @AaronSmithCNN
March 28, 2018: 4:27 PM ET
A federal judge approved $75 million worth of loans to Remington so the company can keep making guns as it works through bankruptcy, according to court documents.
The firearms company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this week after more than 200 years in business.
The loan will allow Remington to continue pursuing a deal to cut as much as $620 million in debt. The company succumbed to a plunge in demand for guns that has dragged down the industry.
Remington has asked for loans totaling $338 million to be approved by April 29, but only a portion has been approved so far.
The $75 million loan approved on Tuesday is the "interim amount to get them through the interim period until they get to that final hearing on the additional amount that they're going to need," said Sarah Foss, legal analyst at Debtwire.
Founded in New York in 1816, Remington is one of the oldest gunmakers in America, and one of the most iconic gun brands in the world. The company, which is based in North Carolina, makes a variety of rifles, handguns and shotguns through its seven plants, including a sprawling brick factory in Ilion, NY, that's been churning out guns since the 1840s.
Gun and ammunition makers like Sturm Ruger (RGR), Vista Outdoor (VSTO)and American Outdoor Brands (AOBC), which owns the Smith and Wesson brand, have been hit hard by slumping sales during the administration of President Trump.
Gun companies experienced record sales during the Obama administration, driven by fears among gun consumers of more restrictive gun control. But these fears have largely faded, along with sales and profits, since the 2016 election of Trump, a Republican endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
Remington makes military semiautomatic rifles, including the Bushmaster used in the 2012 mass shooting that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
Remington has been sued by family members of Sandy Hook victims. Their wrongful death suit is pending with the Connecticut Supreme Court. Lawyers for the families say their suit is unaffected by the Chapter 11 filing.
The company is currently owned by Cerberus Capital Management, which plans to sh
A scholar’s reading of the Bible is drawing criticism for suggesting Jesus might have been a drag king - Independent
29/3/2018
A scholar’s reading of the Bible is drawing criticism for suggesting Jesus might have been a drag king
Posted about by Narjas Zatat in discover
UPVOTE
A professor at a Jesuit-run college in Massachusetts has faced criticism for his ‘radical’ reading of the New Testament, in which he suggests that Jesus was neither male nor female, and may have been a drag king.
Elinor Reilly, a former student at the College of the Holy Cross, wrote an article about Professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew for the Fenwick Review.
In the piece, she outlines in great detail the Chair of the New Testament Studies’ “unconventional approach to gender, sexuality, and race in the biblical texts”.
Reilly cites a 2009 paper Liew co-authored entitled They Were All Together In One Place: Towards Minority Biblical Criticism.
In the volume, he discussed the New Testament Gospel of John:
If one follows the trajectory of the Wisdom/Word or Sophia/Jesus (con)figuration, what we have in John’s Jesus is not only a “king of Israel” or “king of the Ioudaioi”, but also a drag king.
[Christ] ends up appearing as a drag-kingly bride in his passion.
He added:
In addition, we find Jesus disrobing and rerobing in the episode that marks Jesus’ focus on the disciples with the coming of his ‘hour’ (13:3– 5, 12).
This disrobing, as [Colleen] Conway points out, does not disclose anything about Jesus’ anatomy. Instead, it describes Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.
As more than one commentator has pointed out, foot-washing was generally only done by Jewish women or non-Jewish slaves.
12 John is clear that Jesus is an Ioudaios (4:9, 22; 18:33– 35; 19:40); what John is less clear about is whether Jesus is a biological male. Like a literary striptease, this episode is suggestive, even seductive; it shows and withholds at the same time.
Professor Liew also argues that John’s constant references to Jesus and water “speak to Jesus’ gender indeterminacy and hence his cross-dressing and other queer desires”.
He also suggests that the crucifixion scene as described by John implies that “when Jesus’ body is being penetrated, his thoughts are on his Father imagining his passion experience as a… sexual relation with his own Father".
The radical reading has been condemned by readers of Breitbart News, a right wing news website that covered the story.
G. Berlin Germany
@gBerlinGermany
By far one of the most depraved & shameless things we've ever heard:
Tat-Siong Benny Liew, Theology Professor at Jesuit-run College, "eroticizes Jesus' relationship to his disciples and even to God the Father, proposing that 'Jesus himself needs others to cum with the Father'." https://twitter.com/tdwilliamsrome/status/978926468574130178 …
11:19 PM - Mar 28, 2018
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hey it's me! 🇺🇸
@John3_and_16
The Apostle Paul warns us against false teachers:
"For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ..."
Introducing heresy pusher (and Professor) Tat-Siong Benny Liew... http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/28/holy-cross-theology-professor-says-jesus-drag-king-queer-desires/ …
11:09 PM - Mar 28, 2018
Holy Cross Theology Professor Says Jesus Was a ‘Drag King’ with ‘Queer Desires’
The theology program at the Jesuit-run College of the Holy Cross has a new tone ever since the school appointed a gender-obsessed...
breitbart.com
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Jake
@JFK_711
Replying to @DrShayPhD
Tat-Siong Benny Liew is certifiably insane and shouldn't even be teaching at the Rocco Clubbo School of Typewriter Maintenance.
1:40 AM - Mar 29, 2018
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Reill,y however, insists that “Professor Liew’s unconventional readings of Scripture has brought a new theological perspective to Holy Cross”.
indy100 has contacted Professor Liew for comment.
H/T Fenwick Review
Exclusive: German military report Airbus A400M transport still in trouble - Reuters
MARCH 29, 2018 / 9:38 PM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Exclusive: German military report Airbus A400M transport still in trouble
Reuters Staff
BERLIN (Reuters) - The Airbus (AIR.PA) A400M military transport programme faces continued problems such a cumbersome mission planning system that makes it impossible to carry out medical evacuations and other short-term missions, a confidential German military report obtained by Reuters showed.
The report said the lack of a networked computer system required entry of data such as fuel usage into multiple systems, which meant it could take up to 50 man-hours to plan a mission. This, it said, “is not acceptable from an operational view and must be shortened significantly.”
Airbus SE
94.02
AIR.PAPARIS STOCK EXCHANGE
+0.04(+0.04%)
AIR.PA
AIR.PA
In addition, the report cited a “significant risk” that the aircraft would not meet all tactical requirements by the time the German military retires its current fleet of aging C-160 Transall transport planes after 2021.
Airbus, which last month took a new 1.3 billion euro charge on the troubled A400M programme, declined to comment on the German report.
Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Madeline Chambers
Exclusive: German military report Airbus A400M transport still in trouble
Reuters Staff
BERLIN (Reuters) - The Airbus (AIR.PA) A400M military transport programme faces continued problems such a cumbersome mission planning system that makes it impossible to carry out medical evacuations and other short-term missions, a confidential German military report obtained by Reuters showed.
The report said the lack of a networked computer system required entry of data such as fuel usage into multiple systems, which meant it could take up to 50 man-hours to plan a mission. This, it said, “is not acceptable from an operational view and must be shortened significantly.”
Airbus SE
94.02
AIR.PAPARIS STOCK EXCHANGE
+0.04(+0.04%)
AIR.PA
AIR.PA
In addition, the report cited a “significant risk” that the aircraft would not meet all tactical requirements by the time the German military retires its current fleet of aging C-160 Transall transport planes after 2021.
Airbus, which last month took a new 1.3 billion euro charge on the troubled A400M programme, declined to comment on the German report.
Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Madeline Chambers
Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job - TIME
29/3/2018
Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job
Sessions greets law-enforcement officers in Kentucky. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets?” the U.S. Attorney General says. “The government or the outlaws?”
Sessions greets law-enforcement officers in Kentucky. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets?” the U.S. Attorney General says. “The government or the outlaws?” Philip Montgomery for TIME
By MOLLY BALL 6:29 AM EDT
When Jeff Sessions was a boy of 7 or 8, he had a dog that followed him everywhere. But one day, the dog got him in trouble. Sessions had run with the mutt into the woods of rural Alabama, figuring it knew where it was going. By the time he realized he was wrong, the two of them were hopelessly lost. “They closed all the stores and everyone had to go looking for me,” Sessions recalled with a chuckle. “My excuse was, I was just following him.”
Sessions told me this story on March 15–the day before he fired former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe–from his blue vinyl club chair on the military jet that had whisked the U.S. Attorney General away from Washington. It had the ring of a parable: beware those who seem the most loyal to you; it is they who will lead you astray.
Donald Trump once followed Sessions’ lead, promising as a candidate the crackdowns on crime, immigration and trade for which Sessions crusaded in the Senate. The first Senator to endorse Trump, Sessions gave him credibility with the far right and provided the intellectual framework for his law-and-order sloganeering. And as Attorney General, he has turned Trump’s rhetoric into reality, emerging as the most effective enforcer of the President’s agenda.
But if the fixation on law and order brought Sessions and Trump together, it is also what has rent them asunder. When Sessions recused himself a year ago from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he set in motion the chain of events that culminated in the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump has never forgiven him. In public and private, the President has denigrated the proud former Senator, calling him an “idiot,” “beleaguered” and “disgraceful.”
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
The broken relationship has turned the job of a lifetime into an exercise in humiliation. Rumors that Sessions’ neck is on the chopping block are constant, and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has been angling to replace him. As Sessions and I spoke on the plane, he was headed to Nashville to give a speech to a police chiefs’ convention, followed by a stop in Lexington, Ky., to meet with prosecutors, police and families affected by the opioid crisis. All the while, Fox News played on mute above his head, its chyrons questioning whether Sessions was about to be fired.
Even if his tenure ends tomorrow, Sessions would leave a legacy that will affect millions of Americans. He has dramatically shifted the orientation of the Justice Department, pulling back from police oversight and civil rights enforcement and pushing a hard-line approach to drugs, gangs and immigration violations. He has cast aside his predecessors’ attempts to rectify inequities in the criminal-justice system in favor of a maximalist approach to prosecuting and jailing criminals. He has rescinded the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and reversed its stances on voting rights and transgender rights. “I am thrilled to be able to advance an agenda that I believe in,” he told a group of federal prosecutors in Lexington later that day. “I believed in it before I came here, and I’ll believe in it when I’m gone.”
Sessions reviews remarks to be delivered to a gathering of police chiefs in Nashville in mid-March
Sessions reviews remarks to be delivered to a gathering of police chiefs in Nashville in mid-March Philip Montgomery for TIME
Sessions’ liberal critics agree that he’s been remarkably effective. That’s why they find him so frightening. He has, they charge, put the full force of law behind Trump’s racially coded rhetoric. “The Justice Department is supposed to be protecting people, keeping people safe and affirming our basic rights,” says Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat who took the extraordinary step of testifying against a fellow Senator during Sessions’ confirmation hearings last year. “But he has rolled back the Justice Department’s efforts to do that.” The irony of Sessions’ position is that the same critics who despise his policy initiatives are adamant that Trump should not remove him. “Jeff Sessions is not acting in defense of the rights of Americans. He should not be in that job,” Booker told me. “But I do not think he should be fired for the reasons Donald Trump would fire him.”
As the chaos in the White House rages and threatens to consume him, Sessions professes to pay it no heed. “I want to do what the President wants me to do,” he said in his slow, drawling voice, his blue-green eyes peering over the top of his glasses. A wry smirk lifted a corner of his lips. “But I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.”
It was a brisk, sunny day in Lexington, with dirty clumps of snow still clinging to the ground. Sessions marched across the tarmac into the waiting motorcade. At 71, he is full of energy, and his slight stature and elfin ears give him a buoyancy that belies his severe views. His bright eyes and upturned mouth make him look like he’s smiling even when he’s delivering a jeremiad against criminals or foreigners.
In an upstairs room in the building housing the U.S. Attorney’s office, a group of white people sat in a semicircle, surrounded by framed photographs of their dead loved ones. Sessions sat before them, listening to their pleas for more help from the federal government. “‘Just say no,’ it won’t work with this drug,” said a stocky man named Dennis, whose 24-year-old daughter died of a fentanyl overdose.
After hearing the stories, Sessions had a question. “How many of your children had treatment before they died?” Seeing nearly all the hands raised, he nodded grimly. “Well, we need treatment,” he said, “but it is true that a lot of people it doesn’t work for.”
What does work, according to Sessions, is arresting people and locking them up. He has stuck to this stance, forged by his work as a prosecutor in the 1970s and ’80s, even as the mainstream consensus has shifted. In recent years, most experts have come to view the war on drugs as a counterproductive failure, and a bipartisan movement for criminal-justice reform seeks to soften the harsh and unequal penalties it imposed.
The reformers have made considerable headway at the state level. Texas has closed eight prisons and saved millions of dollars without seeing crime rise. In the ’80s and ’90s, “we put a lot of people in prison, but there’s no evidence that made us any safer,” says Koch Industries’ Mark Holden, who has led the conservative Koch brothers’ push on the issue. (Koch Industries, through a subsidiary, is an investor in Meredith Corporation, TIME’s parent company.)
Under Obama, the Justice Department investigated local police departments, exposing systematic mistreatment of minorities, and secured agreements, known as “consent decrees,” to reform their practices. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a “smart on crime” initiative urging federal prosecutors to use discretion in seeking harsh sentences. Reform efforts have helped reduce the federal prison population from 220,000 to 180,000 in the past five years. To Obama’s progressive supporters, these changes were among his greatest strokes of racial progress.
But in the view of Sessions and his supporters, including many in law enforcement, the reformers have it backward. Under Obama, Sessions believes, the DOJ sent all the wrong signals, demoralizing police officers and soft-pedaling the dangers of drugs. In speeches, he cites the shrinking prison population not as a breakthrough but as a worrisome trend. “We’ve got some space to put some people!” he told the chiefs in Nashville. Sessions believes today’s low crime rates are a direct result of “proactive policing” and harsh sentences, and that dialing them back is causing crime to rise. According to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose 7% between 2014 and 2016, and the murder rate rose 20%, following years of decline.
Sessions has moved swiftly to unwind the Obama Justice Department’s policies. He canceled the “smart on crime” initiative and replaced it with a directive to pursue maximal charging and sentencing. He pulled out of the consent decrees and rescinded Holder’s hands-off marijuana-enforcement policy. He announced the end of DACA, stepped up deportation orders and sued California over sanctuary cities. He has embraced Trump’s call to impose the death penalty on some drug dealers, which some legal scholars consider unconstitutional. Emphasizing treatment for drug addicts isn’t just ineffective, according to Sessions–it’s dangerous. “The extraordinary surge in addiction and drug death is a product of a popular misunderstanding of the dangers of drugs,” he told me. “Because all too often, all we get in the media is how anybody who’s against drugs is goofy, and we just ought to chill out.”
In February, Sessions sent a letter warning the Senate that a bill to reduce federal sentences risked “putting the very worst criminals back into our communities.” (An outraged Chuck Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, told reporters that if Sessions wanted to keep making laws, he should go back to elected office.) Sessions believes his erstwhile colleagues have been misled. “This whole mentality that there’s another solution other than incarceration,” he told me, “all I will say to you is, people today don’t know that every one of these things has been tried over the last 40 years.”
Sessions seemed exasperated when I asked him to address the disproportionate impact of harsh policing and incarceration on black families and communities. He cited the work of Heather Mac Donald, the controversial conservative scholar who argues that racial bias in the criminal-justice system is a myth and that the real problem is a “war on cops.” Mac Donald popularized the concept of the “Ferguson effect,” an unproven theory that crime rises when police feel hamstrung by political oversight. Sessions embraces this notion. In cities like Baltimore and Chicago, he told me, politicians “spend all that time attacking the police department instead of the criminals.”
To critics, all these theories are no more than window dressing for a racist system that intimidates, imprisons and kills black people indiscriminately in order to make white people feel safe. Since the 1960s, “law and order” has been a coded political slogan, a fear-based appeal to galvanize white voters. “There is a consensus that the war on drugs of the 1980s and ’90s destroyed communities, disproportionately impacted people of color, ballooned the criminal-justice system and the prisons, and exacerbated poverty and inequality in our country,” says Todd Cox, director of policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. By turning the Justice Department away from civil rights and toward harsh enforcement, Sessions embodies what many see as the institutional racism of the Trump Administration. He has taken the racially coded messages that served as dog whistles during the campaign and operationalized them into policy.
The conviction among his critics that Sessions is racist has sometimes led them to overreach. In February, a Democratic Senator and the American Civil Liberties Union blasted him for referring to the “Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement” in a speech. It was a factual description, one Obama had used on many occasions. But in explaining it to me, Sessions couldn’t resist a detour into cultural stereotypes. “I believe the American legal system, which clearly developed out of England, is a wonder of the world, and it’s based on the fact that lady justice is blindfolded,” he said. “When you go and travel like I have–to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq–where we’ve invested huge amounts of money and effort to export our legal system to a culture that’s totally unfamiliar with it, it doesn’t work. It’s because it requires a degree of trust and respect, education and maybe even a cultural predisposition.”
Sessions delivering a speech to police chiefs in Nashville
Sessions delivering a speech to police chiefs in Nashville Philip Montgomery for TIME
Sessions contends that the policies he champions help minority communities by cleaning up their neighborhoods. “If you do the map of your city and you’ve got five times the murders in a minority neighborhood, do you just go away?” he asked me, eyes narrowed. “Or do you prosecute the criminals who are committing the murders? That’s the fundamental answer. And the other thing is, you think the mothers who’ve got children, the older people who are afraid to walk to the grocery store–shouldn’t they be free just like they are in the elite part of town?”
Sessions leaned over the plastic airplane table. “Whose side are you on?” he asked. “I’m on the victims’ side, and overwhelmingly the victims are minorities. The prosecution of certain minorities for murder, the victim is overwhelmingly another African American or Hispanic. It occurs within their own communities.” (Law-enforcement statistics show white criminals also tend to target white victims.)
His eyes gleamed as he sat back. “We are protecting minority citizens,” he concluded. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets? The government, or the outlaws?”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III grew up in Hybart, a small town in rural southwestern Alabama, where his father owned a country store. He was raised to follow the rules. “I was always persnickety about integrity and all that,” he said. The troubled history of race in America runs through his family. His grandfather, the original J.B. Sessions, was named after two icons of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard, and was 2 when his own father died at Antietam. Sessions’ ancestors migrated south in the 1830s, when President Andrew Jackson forcibly removed Native Americans from the land that is now Alabama to accommodate the growing white population. Like many white Southerners of long lineage, he is descended from numerous slave owners, including his mother’s great-grandfather Oliver Powe, who the 1860 Census records as having owned 25 slaves.
Sessions attended segregated schools and an all-white university. After earning his law degree from the University of Alabama, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in Mobile, and in 1986, then President Reagan nominated him for a federal judgeship. Sessions’ confirmation turned contentious when the Senate Judiciary Committee confronted him with charges of racism. A black assistant U.S. Attorney testified that Sessions had addressed him as “boy” and had said that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was all right until he found out they smoked pot. (Sessions said he was joking.) Just as disturbing to liberals on the committee was a voter-fraud case Sessions had brought against a group of civil rights activists who were helping black voters cast their ballots. (The activists were acquitted.) Sessions protested that he was not a racist, and had allowed civil rights cases to move through his office. His nomination was rejected with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes.
Elected to the Senate in 1996, Sessions became known as a dogmatic outlier. As many Republicans called for increases in legal immigration and clemency for the undocumented, Sessions gave fiery floor speeches denouncing those ideas. He also jibed with Trump on trade, having come to view big global agreements as a raw deal for the American worker. With less immigration and fewer imported goods, he reasoned, companies would be forced to produce their wares in America, using American workers paid a substantial wage. Most economists disagree, arguing that even if these policies were feasible, they would raise prices and lower living standards.
Another crucial element of Sessions’ worldview was his sense of resentment against elites. He saw what he called “Wall Street geniuses” and “masters of the universe” as out of touch with his working-class constituents’ lives. “He was extraordinarily consistent,” says Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and “sort of the opposite of a chamber of commerce Republican.”
Although his crusades were often lonely, Sessions could be effective. In 2013, when a bill providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants had support from powerful advocates across the political spectrum, Sessions was its loudest critic. He couldn’t keep it from passing the Senate but successfully led the charge to stop it in the House. The conservative National Review dubbed him “Amnesty’s worst enemy.”
If many of Sessions’ colleagues regarded him as a gadfly, a growing faction of the hard right came to see him as a hero. The nationalist views he espoused attracted the attention of Breitbart.com and its then chairman, Stephen Bannon. At a time when many Republicans thought only a message of moderation could win back the White House, Bannon, who would go on to become Trump’s chief campaign and White House strategist, was inspired by Sessions’ insistence that restricting immigration and trade could be a political winner. As Sessions wrote in a 2012 memo to his colleagues: “This humble and honest populism–in contrast to the [Obama] Administration’s cheap demagoguery–would open the ears of millions who have turned away from our party.”
“I want to do what the President wants me to do,” says Sessions, seen boarding a government plane to Washington. “I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.”
“I want to do what the President wants me to do,” says Sessions, seen boarding a government plane to Washington. “I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.” Philip Montgomery for TIME
In 2013, Bannon tried to convince Sessions to run for President; he demurred. But Sessions was pleasantly surprised when Trump began campaigning on his old themes. Sessions’ aide Stephen Miller went to work for Trump’s campaign, helping shape his policy platform on immigration, trade and other issues. Just before Super Tuesday, Sessions became the first and only Senator to endorse Trump in the primary, dealing a blow to then rival Ted Cruz. Accepting the endorsement at a massive rally in Madison, Trump called Sessions “a great man.”
Sessions became a close and trusted adviser to the campaign. He was thrilled that Trump had become the pitchman for his positions. “Here he comes on all of it, boom boom boom,” Sessions told me. “Nobody else was saying that.”
As the sun set outside the plane window, Sessions began to wax philosophical about the rule of law. The Attorney General’s job, he said, is to tell the executive what he can and can’t do legally. Tenting his fingers beneath his chin, Sessions said he stands by his recusal from the Russia investigation: “I think I did the right thing. I don’t think the Attorney General can ask everybody else in the department to follow the rules if the Attorney General doesn’t follow them.”
Trump appears to see it differently; he has reportedly griped that Sessions has failed to “protect” him. “He does get frustrated,” Sessions concedes. “He’s trying to run this country, and he’s got to spend his time dealing with certain issues.”
Like so many Republicans, Sessions has accommodated himself to Trump in ways that seem to contravene his principles. The day after I interviewed him, Sessions–acting on a recommendation from the inspector general and FBI disciplinary officials–fired the FBI’s McCabe two days before he was set to retire. McCabe decried the act as politically motivated retaliation, an impression Trump bolstered with a set of gloating morning-after tweets. It was subsequently reported that McCabe had previously investigated Sessions over his Russian contacts.
Still, when it comes to the Russia investigation, Sessions has held the line against Trump’s interference. Shortly before our trip, he had dinner at a Washington restaurant with Solicitor General Noel Francisco and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the official overseeing the Mueller probe. The tiniest of symbolic protests, it nonetheless reportedly sent Trump into a rage. Sessions declined to comment on the dinner conversation, but he did say he ordered the fried chicken–a house specialty–and a banana split that was too big to finish.
Sessions’ ultimate loyalty, he told me, is not to any man but to a principle. “Congress passes a law, judges follow the law, and nobody’s above the law, including the judges, and including the President,” he said. Yet every person of conviction makes a bargain by going to work for Trump: to wield the levers of power, to make changes you believe are for the better, you will have to make certain compromises. As many others can attest–and as Sessions may soon discover–following Trump can lead you astray.
Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job
Sessions greets law-enforcement officers in Kentucky. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets?” the U.S. Attorney General says. “The government or the outlaws?”
Sessions greets law-enforcement officers in Kentucky. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets?” the U.S. Attorney General says. “The government or the outlaws?” Philip Montgomery for TIME
By MOLLY BALL 6:29 AM EDT
When Jeff Sessions was a boy of 7 or 8, he had a dog that followed him everywhere. But one day, the dog got him in trouble. Sessions had run with the mutt into the woods of rural Alabama, figuring it knew where it was going. By the time he realized he was wrong, the two of them were hopelessly lost. “They closed all the stores and everyone had to go looking for me,” Sessions recalled with a chuckle. “My excuse was, I was just following him.”
Sessions told me this story on March 15–the day before he fired former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe–from his blue vinyl club chair on the military jet that had whisked the U.S. Attorney General away from Washington. It had the ring of a parable: beware those who seem the most loyal to you; it is they who will lead you astray.
Donald Trump once followed Sessions’ lead, promising as a candidate the crackdowns on crime, immigration and trade for which Sessions crusaded in the Senate. The first Senator to endorse Trump, Sessions gave him credibility with the far right and provided the intellectual framework for his law-and-order sloganeering. And as Attorney General, he has turned Trump’s rhetoric into reality, emerging as the most effective enforcer of the President’s agenda.
But if the fixation on law and order brought Sessions and Trump together, it is also what has rent them asunder. When Sessions recused himself a year ago from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he set in motion the chain of events that culminated in the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump has never forgiven him. In public and private, the President has denigrated the proud former Senator, calling him an “idiot,” “beleaguered” and “disgraceful.”
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME
The broken relationship has turned the job of a lifetime into an exercise in humiliation. Rumors that Sessions’ neck is on the chopping block are constant, and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has been angling to replace him. As Sessions and I spoke on the plane, he was headed to Nashville to give a speech to a police chiefs’ convention, followed by a stop in Lexington, Ky., to meet with prosecutors, police and families affected by the opioid crisis. All the while, Fox News played on mute above his head, its chyrons questioning whether Sessions was about to be fired.
Even if his tenure ends tomorrow, Sessions would leave a legacy that will affect millions of Americans. He has dramatically shifted the orientation of the Justice Department, pulling back from police oversight and civil rights enforcement and pushing a hard-line approach to drugs, gangs and immigration violations. He has cast aside his predecessors’ attempts to rectify inequities in the criminal-justice system in favor of a maximalist approach to prosecuting and jailing criminals. He has rescinded the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and reversed its stances on voting rights and transgender rights. “I am thrilled to be able to advance an agenda that I believe in,” he told a group of federal prosecutors in Lexington later that day. “I believed in it before I came here, and I’ll believe in it when I’m gone.”
Sessions reviews remarks to be delivered to a gathering of police chiefs in Nashville in mid-March
Sessions reviews remarks to be delivered to a gathering of police chiefs in Nashville in mid-March Philip Montgomery for TIME
Sessions’ liberal critics agree that he’s been remarkably effective. That’s why they find him so frightening. He has, they charge, put the full force of law behind Trump’s racially coded rhetoric. “The Justice Department is supposed to be protecting people, keeping people safe and affirming our basic rights,” says Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat who took the extraordinary step of testifying against a fellow Senator during Sessions’ confirmation hearings last year. “But he has rolled back the Justice Department’s efforts to do that.” The irony of Sessions’ position is that the same critics who despise his policy initiatives are adamant that Trump should not remove him. “Jeff Sessions is not acting in defense of the rights of Americans. He should not be in that job,” Booker told me. “But I do not think he should be fired for the reasons Donald Trump would fire him.”
As the chaos in the White House rages and threatens to consume him, Sessions professes to pay it no heed. “I want to do what the President wants me to do,” he said in his slow, drawling voice, his blue-green eyes peering over the top of his glasses. A wry smirk lifted a corner of his lips. “But I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.”
It was a brisk, sunny day in Lexington, with dirty clumps of snow still clinging to the ground. Sessions marched across the tarmac into the waiting motorcade. At 71, he is full of energy, and his slight stature and elfin ears give him a buoyancy that belies his severe views. His bright eyes and upturned mouth make him look like he’s smiling even when he’s delivering a jeremiad against criminals or foreigners.
In an upstairs room in the building housing the U.S. Attorney’s office, a group of white people sat in a semicircle, surrounded by framed photographs of their dead loved ones. Sessions sat before them, listening to their pleas for more help from the federal government. “‘Just say no,’ it won’t work with this drug,” said a stocky man named Dennis, whose 24-year-old daughter died of a fentanyl overdose.
After hearing the stories, Sessions had a question. “How many of your children had treatment before they died?” Seeing nearly all the hands raised, he nodded grimly. “Well, we need treatment,” he said, “but it is true that a lot of people it doesn’t work for.”
What does work, according to Sessions, is arresting people and locking them up. He has stuck to this stance, forged by his work as a prosecutor in the 1970s and ’80s, even as the mainstream consensus has shifted. In recent years, most experts have come to view the war on drugs as a counterproductive failure, and a bipartisan movement for criminal-justice reform seeks to soften the harsh and unequal penalties it imposed.
The reformers have made considerable headway at the state level. Texas has closed eight prisons and saved millions of dollars without seeing crime rise. In the ’80s and ’90s, “we put a lot of people in prison, but there’s no evidence that made us any safer,” says Koch Industries’ Mark Holden, who has led the conservative Koch brothers’ push on the issue. (Koch Industries, through a subsidiary, is an investor in Meredith Corporation, TIME’s parent company.)
Under Obama, the Justice Department investigated local police departments, exposing systematic mistreatment of minorities, and secured agreements, known as “consent decrees,” to reform their practices. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a “smart on crime” initiative urging federal prosecutors to use discretion in seeking harsh sentences. Reform efforts have helped reduce the federal prison population from 220,000 to 180,000 in the past five years. To Obama’s progressive supporters, these changes were among his greatest strokes of racial progress.
But in the view of Sessions and his supporters, including many in law enforcement, the reformers have it backward. Under Obama, Sessions believes, the DOJ sent all the wrong signals, demoralizing police officers and soft-pedaling the dangers of drugs. In speeches, he cites the shrinking prison population not as a breakthrough but as a worrisome trend. “We’ve got some space to put some people!” he told the chiefs in Nashville. Sessions believes today’s low crime rates are a direct result of “proactive policing” and harsh sentences, and that dialing them back is causing crime to rise. According to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose 7% between 2014 and 2016, and the murder rate rose 20%, following years of decline.
Sessions has moved swiftly to unwind the Obama Justice Department’s policies. He canceled the “smart on crime” initiative and replaced it with a directive to pursue maximal charging and sentencing. He pulled out of the consent decrees and rescinded Holder’s hands-off marijuana-enforcement policy. He announced the end of DACA, stepped up deportation orders and sued California over sanctuary cities. He has embraced Trump’s call to impose the death penalty on some drug dealers, which some legal scholars consider unconstitutional. Emphasizing treatment for drug addicts isn’t just ineffective, according to Sessions–it’s dangerous. “The extraordinary surge in addiction and drug death is a product of a popular misunderstanding of the dangers of drugs,” he told me. “Because all too often, all we get in the media is how anybody who’s against drugs is goofy, and we just ought to chill out.”
In February, Sessions sent a letter warning the Senate that a bill to reduce federal sentences risked “putting the very worst criminals back into our communities.” (An outraged Chuck Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, told reporters that if Sessions wanted to keep making laws, he should go back to elected office.) Sessions believes his erstwhile colleagues have been misled. “This whole mentality that there’s another solution other than incarceration,” he told me, “all I will say to you is, people today don’t know that every one of these things has been tried over the last 40 years.”
Sessions seemed exasperated when I asked him to address the disproportionate impact of harsh policing and incarceration on black families and communities. He cited the work of Heather Mac Donald, the controversial conservative scholar who argues that racial bias in the criminal-justice system is a myth and that the real problem is a “war on cops.” Mac Donald popularized the concept of the “Ferguson effect,” an unproven theory that crime rises when police feel hamstrung by political oversight. Sessions embraces this notion. In cities like Baltimore and Chicago, he told me, politicians “spend all that time attacking the police department instead of the criminals.”
To critics, all these theories are no more than window dressing for a racist system that intimidates, imprisons and kills black people indiscriminately in order to make white people feel safe. Since the 1960s, “law and order” has been a coded political slogan, a fear-based appeal to galvanize white voters. “There is a consensus that the war on drugs of the 1980s and ’90s destroyed communities, disproportionately impacted people of color, ballooned the criminal-justice system and the prisons, and exacerbated poverty and inequality in our country,” says Todd Cox, director of policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. By turning the Justice Department away from civil rights and toward harsh enforcement, Sessions embodies what many see as the institutional racism of the Trump Administration. He has taken the racially coded messages that served as dog whistles during the campaign and operationalized them into policy.
The conviction among his critics that Sessions is racist has sometimes led them to overreach. In February, a Democratic Senator and the American Civil Liberties Union blasted him for referring to the “Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement” in a speech. It was a factual description, one Obama had used on many occasions. But in explaining it to me, Sessions couldn’t resist a detour into cultural stereotypes. “I believe the American legal system, which clearly developed out of England, is a wonder of the world, and it’s based on the fact that lady justice is blindfolded,” he said. “When you go and travel like I have–to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq–where we’ve invested huge amounts of money and effort to export our legal system to a culture that’s totally unfamiliar with it, it doesn’t work. It’s because it requires a degree of trust and respect, education and maybe even a cultural predisposition.”
Sessions delivering a speech to police chiefs in Nashville
Sessions delivering a speech to police chiefs in Nashville Philip Montgomery for TIME
Sessions contends that the policies he champions help minority communities by cleaning up their neighborhoods. “If you do the map of your city and you’ve got five times the murders in a minority neighborhood, do you just go away?” he asked me, eyes narrowed. “Or do you prosecute the criminals who are committing the murders? That’s the fundamental answer. And the other thing is, you think the mothers who’ve got children, the older people who are afraid to walk to the grocery store–shouldn’t they be free just like they are in the elite part of town?”
Sessions leaned over the plastic airplane table. “Whose side are you on?” he asked. “I’m on the victims’ side, and overwhelmingly the victims are minorities. The prosecution of certain minorities for murder, the victim is overwhelmingly another African American or Hispanic. It occurs within their own communities.” (Law-enforcement statistics show white criminals also tend to target white victims.)
His eyes gleamed as he sat back. “We are protecting minority citizens,” he concluded. “The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets? The government, or the outlaws?”
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III grew up in Hybart, a small town in rural southwestern Alabama, where his father owned a country store. He was raised to follow the rules. “I was always persnickety about integrity and all that,” he said. The troubled history of race in America runs through his family. His grandfather, the original J.B. Sessions, was named after two icons of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard, and was 2 when his own father died at Antietam. Sessions’ ancestors migrated south in the 1830s, when President Andrew Jackson forcibly removed Native Americans from the land that is now Alabama to accommodate the growing white population. Like many white Southerners of long lineage, he is descended from numerous slave owners, including his mother’s great-grandfather Oliver Powe, who the 1860 Census records as having owned 25 slaves.
Sessions attended segregated schools and an all-white university. After earning his law degree from the University of Alabama, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in Mobile, and in 1986, then President Reagan nominated him for a federal judgeship. Sessions’ confirmation turned contentious when the Senate Judiciary Committee confronted him with charges of racism. A black assistant U.S. Attorney testified that Sessions had addressed him as “boy” and had said that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was all right until he found out they smoked pot. (Sessions said he was joking.) Just as disturbing to liberals on the committee was a voter-fraud case Sessions had brought against a group of civil rights activists who were helping black voters cast their ballots. (The activists were acquitted.) Sessions protested that he was not a racist, and had allowed civil rights cases to move through his office. His nomination was rejected with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes.
Elected to the Senate in 1996, Sessions became known as a dogmatic outlier. As many Republicans called for increases in legal immigration and clemency for the undocumented, Sessions gave fiery floor speeches denouncing those ideas. He also jibed with Trump on trade, having come to view big global agreements as a raw deal for the American worker. With less immigration and fewer imported goods, he reasoned, companies would be forced to produce their wares in America, using American workers paid a substantial wage. Most economists disagree, arguing that even if these policies were feasible, they would raise prices and lower living standards.
Another crucial element of Sessions’ worldview was his sense of resentment against elites. He saw what he called “Wall Street geniuses” and “masters of the universe” as out of touch with his working-class constituents’ lives. “He was extraordinarily consistent,” says Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and “sort of the opposite of a chamber of commerce Republican.”
Although his crusades were often lonely, Sessions could be effective. In 2013, when a bill providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants had support from powerful advocates across the political spectrum, Sessions was its loudest critic. He couldn’t keep it from passing the Senate but successfully led the charge to stop it in the House. The conservative National Review dubbed him “Amnesty’s worst enemy.”
If many of Sessions’ colleagues regarded him as a gadfly, a growing faction of the hard right came to see him as a hero. The nationalist views he espoused attracted the attention of Breitbart.com and its then chairman, Stephen Bannon. At a time when many Republicans thought only a message of moderation could win back the White House, Bannon, who would go on to become Trump’s chief campaign and White House strategist, was inspired by Sessions’ insistence that restricting immigration and trade could be a political winner. As Sessions wrote in a 2012 memo to his colleagues: “This humble and honest populism–in contrast to the [Obama] Administration’s cheap demagoguery–would open the ears of millions who have turned away from our party.”
“I want to do what the President wants me to do,” says Sessions, seen boarding a government plane to Washington. “I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.”
“I want to do what the President wants me to do,” says Sessions, seen boarding a government plane to Washington. “I do feel like we’re advancing the agenda that he believes in. And what’s good for me is it’s what I believe in too.” Philip Montgomery for TIME
In 2013, Bannon tried to convince Sessions to run for President; he demurred. But Sessions was pleasantly surprised when Trump began campaigning on his old themes. Sessions’ aide Stephen Miller went to work for Trump’s campaign, helping shape his policy platform on immigration, trade and other issues. Just before Super Tuesday, Sessions became the first and only Senator to endorse Trump in the primary, dealing a blow to then rival Ted Cruz. Accepting the endorsement at a massive rally in Madison, Trump called Sessions “a great man.”
Sessions became a close and trusted adviser to the campaign. He was thrilled that Trump had become the pitchman for his positions. “Here he comes on all of it, boom boom boom,” Sessions told me. “Nobody else was saying that.”
As the sun set outside the plane window, Sessions began to wax philosophical about the rule of law. The Attorney General’s job, he said, is to tell the executive what he can and can’t do legally. Tenting his fingers beneath his chin, Sessions said he stands by his recusal from the Russia investigation: “I think I did the right thing. I don’t think the Attorney General can ask everybody else in the department to follow the rules if the Attorney General doesn’t follow them.”
Trump appears to see it differently; he has reportedly griped that Sessions has failed to “protect” him. “He does get frustrated,” Sessions concedes. “He’s trying to run this country, and he’s got to spend his time dealing with certain issues.”
Like so many Republicans, Sessions has accommodated himself to Trump in ways that seem to contravene his principles. The day after I interviewed him, Sessions–acting on a recommendation from the inspector general and FBI disciplinary officials–fired the FBI’s McCabe two days before he was set to retire. McCabe decried the act as politically motivated retaliation, an impression Trump bolstered with a set of gloating morning-after tweets. It was subsequently reported that McCabe had previously investigated Sessions over his Russian contacts.
Still, when it comes to the Russia investigation, Sessions has held the line against Trump’s interference. Shortly before our trip, he had dinner at a Washington restaurant with Solicitor General Noel Francisco and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the official overseeing the Mueller probe. The tiniest of symbolic protests, it nonetheless reportedly sent Trump into a rage. Sessions declined to comment on the dinner conversation, but he did say he ordered the fried chicken–a house specialty–and a banana split that was too big to finish.
Sessions’ ultimate loyalty, he told me, is not to any man but to a principle. “Congress passes a law, judges follow the law, and nobody’s above the law, including the judges, and including the President,” he said. Yet every person of conviction makes a bargain by going to work for Trump: to wield the levers of power, to make changes you believe are for the better, you will have to make certain compromises. As many others can attest–and as Sessions may soon discover–following Trump can lead you astray.
Apple's Tim Cook on Facebook: "I wouldn't be in this situation" - CBS News
March 28, 2018, 2:52 PM
Apple's Tim Cook on Facebook: "I wouldn't be in this situation"
Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook is criticizing Facebook (FB) for its handling of user data, adding to the growing chorus of those attacking the social-media giant following the Cambridge Analytica controversy.
In an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher and MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Cook expressed concerns about Facebook and other companies amassing what he called "detailed profiles" compiled from multiple sources.
He also suggested that the government needs to crack down on Facebook. "I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation," said Cook. "However, I think we're beyond that here."
Cook also questioned the use consumer data to sell advertisements. "The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product. We've elected not to do that," he said. Almost all of Apple's revenue comes from selling iPhones, iPads and other hardware.
Asked by Swisher what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg's position, Cook said pointedly: "I wouldn't be in this situation."
Facebook faces mounting pressure to explain how it let Cambridge Analytica, a data firm started by former White House adviser Steve Bannon and wealthy Republican donor Robert Mercer, "scrape" information for as many as 50 million Americans off its website. The data was then used to target political ads to Facebook users ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is likely to appear before Congress to answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica affair and the social network's data practices, CBS News has learned.
Facebook on Wednesday said it would seek to give users more control over how outside firms use their data. The company has drawn fire for obtaining users' data through terms buried in fine print, making it harder for people to opt out.
It's not the first time Cook has spoken out against Facebook. Most recently, the executive said at a technology conference in China last weekend that he favors "well-crafted regulation" for data privacy, according to Bloomberg.
Apple's Tim Cook on Facebook: "I wouldn't be in this situation"
Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook is criticizing Facebook (FB) for its handling of user data, adding to the growing chorus of those attacking the social-media giant following the Cambridge Analytica controversy.
In an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher and MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Cook expressed concerns about Facebook and other companies amassing what he called "detailed profiles" compiled from multiple sources.
He also suggested that the government needs to crack down on Facebook. "I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation," said Cook. "However, I think we're beyond that here."
Cook also questioned the use consumer data to sell advertisements. "The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product. We've elected not to do that," he said. Almost all of Apple's revenue comes from selling iPhones, iPads and other hardware.
Asked by Swisher what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg's position, Cook said pointedly: "I wouldn't be in this situation."
Facebook faces mounting pressure to explain how it let Cambridge Analytica, a data firm started by former White House adviser Steve Bannon and wealthy Republican donor Robert Mercer, "scrape" information for as many as 50 million Americans off its website. The data was then used to target political ads to Facebook users ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is likely to appear before Congress to answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica affair and the social network's data practices, CBS News has learned.
Facebook on Wednesday said it would seek to give users more control over how outside firms use their data. The company has drawn fire for obtaining users' data through terms buried in fine print, making it harder for people to opt out.
It's not the first time Cook has spoken out against Facebook. Most recently, the executive said at a technology conference in China last weekend that he favors "well-crafted regulation" for data privacy, according to Bloomberg.
Nike Helped Create Sneaker Culture. Now it’s Catering to Female ‘Sneakerheads’ - TIME Business
Nike Helped Create Sneaker Culture. Now it’s Catering to Female ‘Sneakerheads’
Posted: 27 Mar 2018 06:40 AM PDT
In the 1980s, Nike helped launch “sneaker culture” with the release of Michael Jordan’s Air Jordans. “Sneakerheads,” people who collect and obsess over kicks, were born and today help fuel a $1 billion sneaker resale market. But women have been historically left out. The athletic brand is hoping to fix that with Unlaced, a curated destination for female sneaker lovers that will launch online on March 27 and in stores later this year.
“Part of the issue with a majority of classic shoes within sneaker culture is that they have historically been available only in men’s sizes. So it was hard for female ‘sneakerheads’ to participate,” says Elizabeth Semmelhack, the senior curator at Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum and the author of Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture. “Fantastically important female athletes, like Serena Williams, deserve to be at the pinnacle of sneaker culture. But they’re not. And I think that’s reflective of our discomfort with athleticism in relation to female desirability.”
Now, several brands are trying to change that — arguably none bigger than Nike, however, who must act quickly or face losing customers who are increasingly being presented with more activewear and athletic footwear options than ever. Unlaced will be a “fantasy sneaker destination for women,” says Amy Montagne, the Vice President and General Manager of Nike Women.
Unlaced was unveiled during last month’s Paris Fashion Week and will offer unisex sizing on some of Nike’s most famous sneakers (like Air Jordans and Air Force 1s). Influencers like i-D fashion editor Julia Sarr-Jamois will curate the products that run both online and stores, and the brand has worked with female designers to redesign some of its classic trainers.
“Women have always loved sneakers. And now, we’re seeing from sport to street, female sneaker culture really is accelerating worldwide,” Montagne says. “We’re removing some of the barriers for women.”
Courtesy of Nike
But why did it take so long for big brands like Nike to pay attention to female sneaker heads? Montagne, who joined the company in 2005 and took control over the women’s business in 2014, says the brand has always serviced female athletes, but wanted to offer more options for sneakers as style items. In recent years, sneakers have been featured on high-fashion runways, most notably with French brand Céline’s Air Force 1-inspired shoes. In 2014, Rihanna was named creative director for Puma, designing sportswear and sneakers for women.
“We have seen, especially over the past couple years, how women have really been fueling and leading this overall sports and fitness lifestyle,” Montagne says. “We have always been watching that, and Nike Unlaced came together truly as that amazing opportunity to deliver — at last — that destination for women for sneakers… To us, it was a natural transition as we were listening to female customers around the world.”
Montagne says Unlaced is part of Nike’s overall strategy to grow its women’s business from $6.6 billion to $11 billion by 2020. The women’s business, which also includes its sport Hijab and plus-size athletic wear, has outpaced the growth of its men’s business in the past few years, she adds.
Courtesy of Nike
Unlaced arrives amid heightened attention to the inequality of women in the United States. Following Hillary Clinton’s historical presidential run in 2016 and her loss to President Trump who is frequently criticized for his treatment of women, a record number of women are running for office this year. The #MeToo movement has highlighted the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault against women, and removed prominent male players across various industries from their positions of power. And despite Nike’s latest effort to court women, they’re not immune to scrutiny either. On March 15, Nike confirmed it had received internal complaints of workplace misconduct. Nike did not specify the nature of the complaints or whom the complaints were against. (Montagne spoke with TIME on March 14. On March 23, a spokesperson from Nike declined to comment further.)
“Our goal isn’t to grow our market share, but grow the market altogether… What we really try to do is help expand sports by removing barriers to access and helping accelerate sport culture for women all over the globe,” Montagne says. “Everything we’re doing — Nike Unlaced included — is an example of helping doing that at a really important time.”
But Semmelhack wonders whether initiatives like Unlaced will truly help make sneaker culture become more inclusive. “Things that become feminized have historically lost their currency with the male consumer,” she says. “There have been many examples of women adopting and adapting a ‘male form of dress.’ There have not been examples of men co-opting and adopting a ‘female form’ of dress.”
Semmelhack finishes: “I think we would really be in a new moment if there were women’s shoes that men wanted to wear.”
Posted: 27 Mar 2018 06:40 AM PDT
In the 1980s, Nike helped launch “sneaker culture” with the release of Michael Jordan’s Air Jordans. “Sneakerheads,” people who collect and obsess over kicks, were born and today help fuel a $1 billion sneaker resale market. But women have been historically left out. The athletic brand is hoping to fix that with Unlaced, a curated destination for female sneaker lovers that will launch online on March 27 and in stores later this year.
“Part of the issue with a majority of classic shoes within sneaker culture is that they have historically been available only in men’s sizes. So it was hard for female ‘sneakerheads’ to participate,” says Elizabeth Semmelhack, the senior curator at Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum and the author of Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture. “Fantastically important female athletes, like Serena Williams, deserve to be at the pinnacle of sneaker culture. But they’re not. And I think that’s reflective of our discomfort with athleticism in relation to female desirability.”
Now, several brands are trying to change that — arguably none bigger than Nike, however, who must act quickly or face losing customers who are increasingly being presented with more activewear and athletic footwear options than ever. Unlaced will be a “fantasy sneaker destination for women,” says Amy Montagne, the Vice President and General Manager of Nike Women.
Unlaced was unveiled during last month’s Paris Fashion Week and will offer unisex sizing on some of Nike’s most famous sneakers (like Air Jordans and Air Force 1s). Influencers like i-D fashion editor Julia Sarr-Jamois will curate the products that run both online and stores, and the brand has worked with female designers to redesign some of its classic trainers.
“Women have always loved sneakers. And now, we’re seeing from sport to street, female sneaker culture really is accelerating worldwide,” Montagne says. “We’re removing some of the barriers for women.”
Courtesy of Nike
But why did it take so long for big brands like Nike to pay attention to female sneaker heads? Montagne, who joined the company in 2005 and took control over the women’s business in 2014, says the brand has always serviced female athletes, but wanted to offer more options for sneakers as style items. In recent years, sneakers have been featured on high-fashion runways, most notably with French brand Céline’s Air Force 1-inspired shoes. In 2014, Rihanna was named creative director for Puma, designing sportswear and sneakers for women.
“We have seen, especially over the past couple years, how women have really been fueling and leading this overall sports and fitness lifestyle,” Montagne says. “We have always been watching that, and Nike Unlaced came together truly as that amazing opportunity to deliver — at last — that destination for women for sneakers… To us, it was a natural transition as we were listening to female customers around the world.”
Montagne says Unlaced is part of Nike’s overall strategy to grow its women’s business from $6.6 billion to $11 billion by 2020. The women’s business, which also includes its sport Hijab and plus-size athletic wear, has outpaced the growth of its men’s business in the past few years, she adds.
Courtesy of Nike
Unlaced arrives amid heightened attention to the inequality of women in the United States. Following Hillary Clinton’s historical presidential run in 2016 and her loss to President Trump who is frequently criticized for his treatment of women, a record number of women are running for office this year. The #MeToo movement has highlighted the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault against women, and removed prominent male players across various industries from their positions of power. And despite Nike’s latest effort to court women, they’re not immune to scrutiny either. On March 15, Nike confirmed it had received internal complaints of workplace misconduct. Nike did not specify the nature of the complaints or whom the complaints were against. (Montagne spoke with TIME on March 14. On March 23, a spokesperson from Nike declined to comment further.)
“Our goal isn’t to grow our market share, but grow the market altogether… What we really try to do is help expand sports by removing barriers to access and helping accelerate sport culture for women all over the globe,” Montagne says. “Everything we’re doing — Nike Unlaced included — is an example of helping doing that at a really important time.”
But Semmelhack wonders whether initiatives like Unlaced will truly help make sneaker culture become more inclusive. “Things that become feminized have historically lost their currency with the male consumer,” she says. “There have been many examples of women adopting and adapting a ‘male form of dress.’ There have not been examples of men co-opting and adopting a ‘female form’ of dress.”
Semmelhack finishes: “I think we would really be in a new moment if there were women’s shoes that men wanted to wear.”
Everyone’s New Childhood Hero Is Trying to Save Toys ‘R’ Us With a GoFundMe - TIME Business
Everyone’s New Childhood Hero Is Trying to Save Toys ‘R’ Us With a GoFundMe
Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:01 AM PDT
With the shutdown of all Toys ‘R’ Us stores looming, one man has taken it upon himself to try to save the beloved toy retailer from total liquidation.
Isaac Larian, the head of MGA Entertainment Inc.—a.k.a. the company behind Bratz dolls and Little Tikes—has officially launched a GoFundMe page in an attempt to rescue Toys ‘R’ Us from bankruptcy by purchasing part or all of the company.
Larian and and his investors kickstarted the campaign by donating $200 million of their own money to the cause. However, with a goal of $1 billion by May 28, 2018, there is still a long way to go.
“Toys ‘R’ Us is on the verge of permanently closing its doors. It feels like the end of an era, with sad headlines spreading across news and social media, BUT there is still time to save this American icon—and you can help,” the page reads. “You can be a part of this historic movement to #SaveToysRUs by donating today! Your donation will help to ensure that generations to come can ‘always be a Toys ‘R’ Us kid’ and save employee jobs that are at stake should the company cease operation.”
Will you be donating?
Waymo and Jaguar Are Making Self-Driving Electric SUVs Together - TIME Business
Waymo and Jaguar Are Making Self-Driving Electric SUVs Together
Posted: 27 Mar 2018 07:46 AM PDT
Waymo is teaming up with Jaguar Land Rover on autonomous vehicles, its second major automaker partnership and a big boost for the nascent technology that has come under scrutiny recently.
Under the accord, Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo will integrate its self-driving system into Jaguar’s I-Pace electric SUVs, the first all-electric offering from the luxury unit of Tata Motors Ltd. Waymo said it plans to place 20,000 autonomous I-Pace vehicles on the road for tests in 2018. By 2020, the vehicles will become part of Waymo’s ride-hailing taxi service, set to begin this year.
“It ended up being a really terrific next vehicle for us and fit one of the key aspects of our business plan,” John Krafcik, Waymo’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “We can get closer to getting just the right car for just the ride that person has requested.”
Waymo, which has racked up the most autonomous test miles on roads, is eager to work with more car companies to bolster its lead as it prepares to launch a commercial ride-hailing service. The companies didn’t disclose financial terms, but Waymo is planning to purchase the I-Pace vehicles, which sell for $69,500. That would place Waymo’s payment for the deal at more than $1.3 billion.
A self-driving car from Uber Technologies Inc. hit and killed a pedestrian last week, which stunned the industry and kicked off a debate about the technology’s capabilities on open roads. On Saturday, Krafcik said he was confident that Waymo’s technology would have avoided the crash.
After courting major automakers for years, Waymo, the former Google self-driving project, inked its first deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV in 2016. Waymo then deployed Chrysler Pacifica minivans in its tests cities and, in January, said it was buying “thousands” of the vehicles ahead of its commercial taxi service debut.
The Jaguar vehicles, like the Pacficas, will bear the Waymo logo and be part of its coming ride-hailing network. Yet Krafcik insisted that Jaguar has a financial stake in the deal. “It’s a real partnership,” Krafcik said. “You’ll see aspects of that going forward.”
In September, Bloomberg reported that Jaguar Land Rover was weighing purchases of technology companies that could boost its efforts to roll out electric vehicles and autonomous driving systems. In June, the automaker said it had invested $25 million in Lyft Inc. as part of a funding round that closed in April. The company also said it’s working with Lyft on autonomous-driving technology and will offer vehicles for rent to the San Francisco-based startup’s drivers. Waymo has also announced a partnership with Lyft.
North and South Korea set date for leaders' summit - BBC News
29/3/2018
North and South Korea set date for leaders' summit
Officials agreed on Wednesday that talks would be held between North and South Korea
The leaders of North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on 27 April.
Talks between the North's Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon-Jae-in would be held in the border village of Panmunjom, a joint statement said.
The date was announced after officials from the two sides met to prepare for the summit.
The announcement comes a day after news emerged of discussions between Mr Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
At the meeting in Beijing, the North Korean leader repeated his offer to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.
The North Korean leader said recently that he wants to meet US President Donald Trump. Mr Trump accepted the offer and they could meet as soon as May.
North Korea-Trump talks in 400 words
Are North and South Korea friends again?
The North and South Korean delegates said the inter-Korean summit would take place at the South Korean Peace House in the so-called "truce village" of Panmunjom.
At the press conference announcing the summit, North Korea's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said "Over the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place."
It will only be the third time leaders of the two countries have met, since an armistice was signed to conclude the Korean War in 1953.
The last summit took place in 2007 between the former leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il and the ex-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
The two states' only other summit was held in Pyongyang in 2000.
Diplomatic flurry
On Wednesday, Mr Trump welcomed news of progress following the talks between the Chinese and North Korean leaders in Beijing.
He said however that sanctions on North Korea would continue.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me. In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!
9:16 PM - Mar 28, 2018
On Thursday, China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang welcomed the talks between the two Koreas, adding: "We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and that the peaceful situation can last."
The announcement of a date for talks between North and South Korea is the latest move in a flurry of diplomatic activity since the start of the year, which saw the North attend the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
North and South Korea set date for leaders' summit
Officials agreed on Wednesday that talks would be held between North and South Korea
The leaders of North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on 27 April.
Talks between the North's Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon-Jae-in would be held in the border village of Panmunjom, a joint statement said.
The date was announced after officials from the two sides met to prepare for the summit.
The announcement comes a day after news emerged of discussions between Mr Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
At the meeting in Beijing, the North Korean leader repeated his offer to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.
The North Korean leader said recently that he wants to meet US President Donald Trump. Mr Trump accepted the offer and they could meet as soon as May.
North Korea-Trump talks in 400 words
Are North and South Korea friends again?
The North and South Korean delegates said the inter-Korean summit would take place at the South Korean Peace House in the so-called "truce village" of Panmunjom.
At the press conference announcing the summit, North Korea's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said "Over the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place."
It will only be the third time leaders of the two countries have met, since an armistice was signed to conclude the Korean War in 1953.
The last summit took place in 2007 between the former leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il and the ex-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
The two states' only other summit was held in Pyongyang in 2000.
Diplomatic flurry
On Wednesday, Mr Trump welcomed news of progress following the talks between the Chinese and North Korean leaders in Beijing.
He said however that sanctions on North Korea would continue.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me. In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!
9:16 PM - Mar 28, 2018
On Thursday, China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang welcomed the talks between the two Koreas, adding: "We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and that the peaceful situation can last."
The announcement of a date for talks between North and South Korea is the latest move in a flurry of diplomatic activity since the start of the year, which saw the North attend the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Thai beach from Leonardo DiCaprio film to close temporarily - BBC News
29/3/2018
Thai beach from Leonardo DiCaprio film to close temporarily
Maya Beach in 1999, before it was made famous by The Beach
Authorities in Thailand have ordered the temporary closure of the beach made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie The Beach.
Maya Beach, on the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, will be closed for four months from June.
According to officials, the closure is a bid to halt environmental damage caused by tourists.
The closure will allow for the recovery of the island's battered coral reefs and sea life.
According to local news outlet the Bangkok Post, all marine parks in Thailand are closed from May to October, during the country's rainy season. The closure also allows for marine wildlife to recover from the effects of mass tourism.
Much of Maya Beach has been taken over by tourists
However, Maya Bay has previously remained open all year round because of tourist demand.
"Islands have very fragile ecosystems that simply cannot handle so many people, pollution from boats and beachfront hotels," Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine expert, told news agency Reuters.
"Sometimes, a complete closure is the only way for nature to heal."
Mr Thon added that more than three-quarters of Thailand's coral reefs had been damaged by rising sea temperatures and unchecked tourism.
Thailand's National Parks and Wildlife Department will set a daily limit of 2,000 tourists when Maya Beach reopens, and boats will no longer be allowed to anchor there, according to the Associated Press.
More than 35 million tourists visited Thailand last year.
Thai beach from Leonardo DiCaprio film to close temporarily
Maya Beach in 1999, before it was made famous by The Beach
Authorities in Thailand have ordered the temporary closure of the beach made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie The Beach.
Maya Beach, on the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, will be closed for four months from June.
According to officials, the closure is a bid to halt environmental damage caused by tourists.
The closure will allow for the recovery of the island's battered coral reefs and sea life.
According to local news outlet the Bangkok Post, all marine parks in Thailand are closed from May to October, during the country's rainy season. The closure also allows for marine wildlife to recover from the effects of mass tourism.
Much of Maya Beach has been taken over by tourists
However, Maya Bay has previously remained open all year round because of tourist demand.
"Islands have very fragile ecosystems that simply cannot handle so many people, pollution from boats and beachfront hotels," Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine expert, told news agency Reuters.
"Sometimes, a complete closure is the only way for nature to heal."
Mr Thon added that more than three-quarters of Thailand's coral reefs had been damaged by rising sea temperatures and unchecked tourism.
Thailand's National Parks and Wildlife Department will set a daily limit of 2,000 tourists when Maya Beach reopens, and boats will no longer be allowed to anchor there, according to the Associated Press.
More than 35 million tourists visited Thailand last year.
Ghostly galaxy may be missing dark matter - BBC News
Ghostly galaxy may be missing dark matter
By Mary Halton
Science reporter, BBC News
28 March 2018
Hubble image: The galaxy is so faint that other spiral galaxies can been seen through it
An unusually transparent galaxy about the size of the Milky Way is prompting new questions for astrophysicists.
The object, with the catchy moniker of NGC1052-DF2, appears to contain no dark matter.
If this turns out to be true, it may be the first galaxy of its kind - made up only of ordinary matter. Currently, dark matter is thought to be essential to the fabric of the Universe as we understand it.
The study is published in Nature.
A new map of the Universe's dark matter
Hubble scores unique view of distant galaxy
The authors of the study weren't initially on the hunt for a dark matter-free galaxy; instead they had set out to take a closer look at large, ultra-diffuse galaxies.
These are similar in size to the spiral galaxies we're more familiar with, but have a fraction of the number of stars.
When Prof Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of the study, first spotted NGC1052-DF2, "I stared a lot at that image and just marvelled at it... It's like this ghostly glow in the sky."
The galaxy has very few stars, but many of them are grouped together in unusually bright clusters. When the team studied the behaviour of these clusters, they found that the stars seemed to account for all of the galaxy's mass.
Leaving no room for dark matter.
Artwork: a map of dark matter in the local universe
This is not the case for most galaxies.
"There's about five times more dark matter in a galaxy than regular matter," explained Dr Michelle Collins, a physicist at the University of Surrey who was not involved in the study.
"As you go further out from the galaxy you have fewer stars and more dark matter. The dark matter halo is much more extended than the stars are in a galaxy," she added.
You can't have one without the other
As it has greater mass than normal matter, dark matter is believed to hold the necessary gas together while galaxies are forming.
"So this galaxy would have to form a different way: maybe from interactions within gas that's flowing into or blowing out of a larger galaxy," North Carolina State University astrophysicist Dr Katherine Mack told BBC News.
Andromeda: most galaxies have five times more dark matter than regular matter
"It's not just galaxies," explains van Dokkum. "The entire fabric of the universe is really the scaffolding of dark matter and everything else is pasted on it."
For Mack, the most exciting aspect of this galaxy is its potential to prove that dark matter - until now widely theorised but not directly observed - is real.
If dark matter were just an unexplained effect of the gravity from regular matter, its effects would be visible in this galaxy. "So it only makes sense if dark matter is a real substance, that can be present or not, separately from the regular matter," Mack added.
The team has another paper forthcoming that will take a closer look at the bright star clusters, and may unravel more of NGC1052-DF2's mystery.
Dark materials
More work remains to be done on this and similar objects before dark matter theory needs to be fundamentally altered, however.
Once launched, the James Webb Space Telescope will offer a better look at distant galaxies
"You always have to be careful to say it's the first of anything," says van Dokkum. "It's certainly the best candidate for a baryonic [ordinary matter] galaxy."
Dr Collins is cautious to conclude that the galaxy has no dark matter halo, based on the current evidence.
She notes that there may be other galaxies with unusual and unexplained features, but technology will need to improve before they can be properly observed.
"We have some galaxies nearby that show some similar properties but they're much fainter. They're much smaller objects," she told BBC News.
Dr Richard Massey, a physicist at Durham University, agrees: "I'm genuinely very impressed with the work, and I'd use the conclusions to say that we should stare at these objects a lot harder for a lot longer - but I wouldn't conclude anything profound about dark matter quite yet," he told BBC News.
By Mary Halton
Science reporter, BBC News
28 March 2018
Hubble image: The galaxy is so faint that other spiral galaxies can been seen through it
An unusually transparent galaxy about the size of the Milky Way is prompting new questions for astrophysicists.
The object, with the catchy moniker of NGC1052-DF2, appears to contain no dark matter.
If this turns out to be true, it may be the first galaxy of its kind - made up only of ordinary matter. Currently, dark matter is thought to be essential to the fabric of the Universe as we understand it.
The study is published in Nature.
A new map of the Universe's dark matter
Hubble scores unique view of distant galaxy
The authors of the study weren't initially on the hunt for a dark matter-free galaxy; instead they had set out to take a closer look at large, ultra-diffuse galaxies.
These are similar in size to the spiral galaxies we're more familiar with, but have a fraction of the number of stars.
When Prof Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of the study, first spotted NGC1052-DF2, "I stared a lot at that image and just marvelled at it... It's like this ghostly glow in the sky."
The galaxy has very few stars, but many of them are grouped together in unusually bright clusters. When the team studied the behaviour of these clusters, they found that the stars seemed to account for all of the galaxy's mass.
Leaving no room for dark matter.
Artwork: a map of dark matter in the local universe
This is not the case for most galaxies.
"There's about five times more dark matter in a galaxy than regular matter," explained Dr Michelle Collins, a physicist at the University of Surrey who was not involved in the study.
"As you go further out from the galaxy you have fewer stars and more dark matter. The dark matter halo is much more extended than the stars are in a galaxy," she added.
You can't have one without the other
As it has greater mass than normal matter, dark matter is believed to hold the necessary gas together while galaxies are forming.
"So this galaxy would have to form a different way: maybe from interactions within gas that's flowing into or blowing out of a larger galaxy," North Carolina State University astrophysicist Dr Katherine Mack told BBC News.
Andromeda: most galaxies have five times more dark matter than regular matter
"It's not just galaxies," explains van Dokkum. "The entire fabric of the universe is really the scaffolding of dark matter and everything else is pasted on it."
For Mack, the most exciting aspect of this galaxy is its potential to prove that dark matter - until now widely theorised but not directly observed - is real.
If dark matter were just an unexplained effect of the gravity from regular matter, its effects would be visible in this galaxy. "So it only makes sense if dark matter is a real substance, that can be present or not, separately from the regular matter," Mack added.
The team has another paper forthcoming that will take a closer look at the bright star clusters, and may unravel more of NGC1052-DF2's mystery.
Dark materials
More work remains to be done on this and similar objects before dark matter theory needs to be fundamentally altered, however.
Once launched, the James Webb Space Telescope will offer a better look at distant galaxies
"You always have to be careful to say it's the first of anything," says van Dokkum. "It's certainly the best candidate for a baryonic [ordinary matter] galaxy."
Dr Collins is cautious to conclude that the galaxy has no dark matter halo, based on the current evidence.
She notes that there may be other galaxies with unusual and unexplained features, but technology will need to improve before they can be properly observed.
"We have some galaxies nearby that show some similar properties but they're much fainter. They're much smaller objects," she told BBC News.
Dr Richard Massey, a physicist at Durham University, agrees: "I'm genuinely very impressed with the work, and I'd use the conclusions to say that we should stare at these objects a lot harder for a lot longer - but I wouldn't conclude anything profound about dark matter quite yet," he told BBC News.
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