Emerging reports suggest that
Donald Trump's new administration has deleted swathes of Barack Obama's
pet policies from the White House website.
Daily Mail reports that deleted from the website were the phrases 'LGBT' (gay) rights and 'climate change'.
A report on the Labor Department’s website on LGBT workers rihts was also removed.
Advocates
for the LGBT community have worried about what a Trump administration
would mean for the progress made on equality issues under President
Obama. As a candidate, President Trump said he is opposed to gay
marriage and Vice President Pence has taken strong anti-gay rights
stances throughout his political career.
And while it’s standard for the new administration to update the White House’s official website
with its agenda as part of the transition it is notable that the Trump
administration did not choose to include anything about the LGBT
community.
The tax issue
Trump
met with a dozen prominent American manufacturers at the White House on
Monday, January 23, promising them he would slash regulations and cut
corporate taxes.
But he warned them of penalties if they moved production outside the country.
Trump,
who took office last Friday, promised to bring manufacturing plants
back to the United States during his campaign, and has not hesitated to
call out by name companies that he thinks should bring outsourced
production back home.
He told the
chief executives of Ford, Dow Chemical, Dell-Technologies, Tesla and
others that he would like to cut corporate taxes to the 15...20% range.
This is down from current statutory levels of 35% – a pledge that will require cooperation from the Republican-led US Congress.
But he said business leaders have told him that reducing regulations is even more important.
“We think we can cut regulations by 75 per cent, maybe more,” Trump told business leaders in the Roosevelt Room.
“When
you want to expand your plant or when Mark wants to come in and build a
big, massive plant or when Dell wants to come in and do something
monstrous and special – you’re going to have your approvals really
fast,” Trump said, referring to Mark Fields, CEO of Ford, who sat around the boardroom style table.
The
new president told companies that they were welcome to negotiate with
governors to move production between states, but said those businesses
that choose to move factories outside the country would pay a price.
“We are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in,” Trump said.
“A
company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States, and
build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is
going to just flow across the border into the United States – that’s not
going to happen,” he said.
Trump was scheduled to hold a meeting later on Monday with labour leaders and U.S. workers, the White House said.
Trump,
a Republican who took over from former Democratic President Barack
Obama, was also expected to sign executive orders to renegotiate the
free trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, and
to formally withdraw the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
Between winning the
presidential election in November and taking office, Trump hosted a
number of U.S. CEOs in meetings in New York, including business leaders
from defense, technology and other sectors.
Reuters reports that he also met with leaders of several labor unions, including the AFL- CIO.
Trump, a real estate developer,
has particularly focused on manufacturing, lamenting during his
inaugural address on Friday about “rusted-out factories scattered like
tombstones across the landscape of our nation” and vowing to boost US
industries over foreign ones.
Withdrawing from 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TGPP)
President
Donald Trump signed an executive order formally withdrawing the United
States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TGPP) trade deal on
Monday in Washington.
This is in line with a promise made during his campaign last year.
In
an Oval Office ceremony, President Trump also signed an order imposing a
federal hiring freeze and a directive banning U.S. non-governmental
organisations receive federal funding from providing abortions abroad.
Mr Trump called the TPP order a “great thing for the American worker.”
The Taliban threat
The
Taliban has called on President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces
from the "quagmire" of Afghanistan, saying that nothing has been
achieved in 15 years of war except bloodshed and destruction.
In an open letter to the new U.S. president published on one of its official web page,
the insurgent movement said the United States had lost credibility
after spending a trillion dollars on a fruitless entanglement.
"So, the responsibility to bring to an end this war also rests on your shoulders," it said.
So
far, Trump has had little to say publicly about Afghanistan, where some
8,400 U.S. troops remain as a part of the NATO-led coalition's training
mission to support local forces as well as a separate U.S.
counter-terrorism mission.
Two of his
top security appointments - retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as
Secretary of Defense and former General Michael Flynn as National
Security Adviser - both have extensive experience in Afghanistan.
The
Taliban, however, warned Trump against relying on the kind of
"unrealistic" reports presented to former presidents by their generals,
saying: "They would emphasize continuation of war and occupation of
Afghanistan because they can have better positions and privileges in
war."
The United States would not
accept foreign forces on its territory or even in a neighboring country,
said the Taliban. It accused Washington of imposing a "surrogate
administration" on Afghanistan in the face of popular Muslim resistance.
"You have to realize that the Afghan Muslim nation has risen up against foreign occupation," it said.
The
Taliban has made steady inroads against the Western-backed government
in Kabul since coalition forces ended their main combat mission in 2014,
with government forces now in control of only two thirds of the
country.
Expectations low as Syria's warring sides meet
Iraqi forces have taken complete control of eastern Mosul, says defense ministry.
It
has repeatedly urged the United States and its allies to leave
Afghanistan, ruling out peace talks with the Kabul government while
foreign forces remain on Afghan soil.
Trump
has sharply criticized past U.S. administrations for their handling of
conflicts in the Muslim world but he has also pledged to eradicate
militant Islamists around the globe.
The abortion dilemma
Trump
on Monday signed a decree barring US federal funding for foreign
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that support abortion, relaunching a
battle that has long divided Americans. It comes just two days after
women led a massive protest march in Washington to defend their rights,
including to abortion.
The decision
to ban foreign aid to groups that lobby in support of abortion rights is
certain to deepen concern among already apprehensive US family planning
and women’s rights organizations.
Stenny
Hoyer, a Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, sharply
criticized Trump for using his first week in office “to attack women’s
health”.
According to Trump: “It
should be no surprise to the millions of women and men who gathered in
protest this weekend across the country – and around the world – that
Republicans are focused more on making it harder for women to access
health care than on the serious economic and security challenges we
face.”
The restrictions imposed
on Monday prohibit foreign NGOs that receive US family planning
assistance from using non-US funding to provide abortion services,
information, counseling or referrals and from engaging in advocacy to
promote abortion.
They were first put
in place in 1984 by the Republican president Ronald Reagan. Later
eliminated by the Democratic president Bill Clinton, they were
reinstalled by his Republican successor George W. Bush, and annulled
again after Barack Obama took office. Galvanized by Trump’s November 8
victory in the election, abortion opponents in states where Republicans
hold power moved swiftly last month to adopt draconian anti-abortion
measures that in some cases pose challenges to constitutional liberties.
The new president, meanwhile, has
pledged to nominate an anti-abortion justice to the Supreme Court, which
could lead to overturning Roe v. Wade, the emblematic ruling that
legalized abortion in the United States in 1973.
In conclusion
Within moments of the inauguration of President Trump, the official White House website on Friday, witnessed an unexpected purge.
It
came as part of the full digital turnover of whitehouse.gov, including
taking down and archiving all the Obama administration’s personal and
policy pages. That also included a page devoted to lesbigay, and
transgender issues. At the same time, the official White House Twitter
handles also changed over, allowing the new US leader to now post on
Twitter as @POTUS.
But the digital
change, which flashed into place at noon on Friday, immediately placed
into sharp relief some of the starkest differences between the old
president and the new.
And
for advocates of climate change policy, it presented the first concrete
sign that President Trump remains, as he was on the campaign trail,
skeptical and dismissive of the established science of human-caused
climate change, and committed to blocking policies to curb it.
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