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Scott Schoettes, Counsel and HIV Project Director at the pioneering LGBTQ legal groupLambda Legal, resigned late last week from thePresidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), along with five other council members, in protest of Donald Trumps polices or lack of polices to combat the HIV epidemic.

On Friday, Schoettes lambasted Trump as callous, a president who simply does not care, laying out the reasons for the resignationsin a piece on Newsweek.com:

As advocates for people living with HIV, we have dedicated our lives to combating this disease and no longer feel we can do so effectively within the confines of an advisory body to a president who simply does not care. The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, andmost concerningpushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.

PACHA, created in 1995 during the Clinton administration, advises the Secretary of Health & Human Services, who is now Tom Price, the former Georgia GOP congressman with an abominable anti-LGBTQ voting record. In 2013, Price, on a conference call of far-right activists, responded to a question about the medical health impact of the homosexual agenda by stating that the consequences of activity that has been seen as outside the norm are real and must be explored completely and in their entirety prior to moving forward with any social legislation that would alter things.

Price is now spearheading Trumps and the GOPs efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with Trumpcare, which the Congressional Budge Office estimated would cause 23 million people to lose health care within ten years. This would harm hundreds of thousands of people with HIV across the country as well as many more HIV-negative gay and bisexual men and transgender women at risk who need insurance for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the drug therapy to prevent HIV infection. And any advances to stem the epidemic could be dramatically halted or reversed.

One of the most ominous signs of Prices and the Trump administrations lack of concern about HIV is that the website for the Office of AIDS Policy was taken down shortly after Trump took office and has not been replaced another reason cited by the six members of PACHA who resigned.

Some activists are wondering why only six of the 21 members of the council in fact resigned, given all the evidence of this administrations willful negligence.

How about the other members of PACHA? Wheres their courage? This should have been a mass protest with ALL members resigning, wrote prominent, long-time AIDS activist Peter Staley, an early organizer in the groups ACT UP and Treatment Action Group (TAG), which successfully pressured government and drug companies to create life-saving drugs for people with HIV in the 90s, on his Facebook page. Its very obvious this administration is not going to use PACHA or do ANYTHING around HIV/AIDS. Protest is the ONLY response we have at this point.

Its a very important point. Ronald Reagan eventually created a presidential AIDS commission as a fig leaf, using advocates and experts to make it seem like he was doing something when in fact their recommendations were ignored and precious time was lost while little was done and thousands died. Activists and experts, if they dont have the ear of the administration and the will from officials for sound HIV policy around treatment and prevention, should not be providing cover, and instead should be embarrassing the Trump administration.

This is a critical time in the epidemic, as the epicenter has in many ways shifted from large gay meccas like New York and San Francisco to smaller cities in the conservative Deep South, where HIV continues to disproportionately affect black gay and bisexual men and transgender women (as it does all over the country), and where efforts at treatment and prevention have always terribly lagged. As Linda Villarosa reportedin a piece for the cover of the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago, Americas Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic, a stunning 50 percent of black gay and bisexual men will be infected with HIV over their lifetimes:

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using the first comprehensive national estimates of lifetime risk of H.I.V. for several key populations, predicted that if current rates continue, one in two African-American gay and bisexual men will be infected with the virus. That compares with a lifetime risk of one in 99 for all Americans and one in 11 for white gay and bisexual men. To offer more perspective: Swaziland, a tiny African nation, has the worlds highest rate of H.I.V., at 28.8 percent of the population. If gay and bisexual African-American men made up a country, its rate would surpass that of this impoverished African nation and all other nations.

Thats horrifying and unacceptable. With an administration that is literally content to allow people to get sick and die, the only response is to make as much noise as possible, as Ive noted previously, and point to the callous disregard. Protest takes many forms, and resigning from this administrations panels and councils as expert advisors to the EPA did after the Trump administration dsmissed half of the members of an important science committee sends a powerful message. All of the members of PACHA should follow the brave lead of the six who resigned last week, and speak out loudly about this administrations brutal policies.

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Six Top Experts Resigned From Donald Trump's HIV/AIDS Advisory Panel - HuffPost

In response to President Donald Trumps announcement on Friday that he is reversing the Obama administrations lifted restrictions with Cuba, the Castro government released a lengthy statement saying the U.S. is in no condition to lecture them, especially given the sorry state of race relations in the U.S.

We have deep concerns by the respect and the guaranties of the human rights in that country, where there is a large number of cases of murder, brutality and police abuse, particularly against the African Americans; the right to live is violated as a result of deaths by firearms, the statement read.

On Friday in the anti-Castro stronghold of Miami, Trump listed a litany of purported abuses administered by the Castro regime, including the harboring of Assata Shakur, saying, The Castro regime has shipped arms to North Korea and fueled chaos in Venezuela. While imprisoning innocents, it has harbored cop killers, hijackers and terrorists. It has supported human trafficking, forced labor and exploitation all around the globe.

CNN reports that the letter fired right back listing laundry list of U.S. not-so-niceness including: racial discrimination, salary inequality between genders, the marginalization of immigrants and refugees from Islamic and other countries, Trumps proposed wall on the southern border, his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, the imprisonment of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, the killing of U.S. and foreign citizens in drone attacks, the preface for and conduct of the wars in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries, and estimates that the Republican health care bill would cause 23 million people to lose medical insurance.

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump spoke before an audience in Miami, Florida, to announce the

The missive (the whole of which I cannot find) continues, The US President, ill-advised once again, takes decisions that favor the political interests of an extremist minority of Cuban origin in the state of Florida, who driven by petty motivation, do not desist from their objective to punish Cuba and its people for exercising the legitimate and sovereign right to be free and for having taken the reins of their own destiny.

It would be good for the U.S.especially under Trumpto remember: when you point the finger, there are three that are pointing right back atcha.

Read more at CNN.

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Cuba Calls Out Donald Trump, US: Don't Get Hincty With Us, Racist Hypocrites - The Root

Relaxed, smiling broadly, President Donald Trump likely had no idea what Rhode Island teacher of the year Nikos Giannopoulos was doing just behind his back the moment a special Oval Office photo was snapped. Giannopoulos, sporting a rainbow pin in his lapel, posed with a lacy fan to make a point. Now the photo with him and both Donald and Melania Trump is drawing scads of views on his Facebook page.

Giannopoulos, who teaches 11th and 12th graders at Beacon Charter High School for the Arts in Woonsocket, visited the White House with other teachers of the year in April. He received the photo of his moment with Trump this week and immediately posted it.

He said he wore the pin to represent my gratitude for the LGBTQ community that has taught me to be proud, bold, and empowered by my identity even when circumstances make that difficult. He brought the fan that day tocelebrate the joy and freedom of gender nonconformity.

When I met the president as Rhode Islands state teacher of the year, I did not know what to expect, he wrote on Facebook after the photo was taken. After a lengthy security process, we were welcomed into the Roosevelt Room where we each met Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Shortly thereafter, we walked into the Oval Office. The man seated at the desk read prepared remarks from a sheet of paper and made some comments about CEOs and which states he loved, based on electoral votes that he had secured. He did not rise from his seat to present the national teacher of the year with her much-deserved award, nor did he allow her to speak.

Giannopoulos wanted to speak to the president, but none of the teachers got the chance(though Trump did tell him that he was very stylish with his fan as the teachers gathered around the president, Giannopoulos told Yahoo). He had wanted to tell Trump that queer lives matter and anti-LGBTQ policies have a body count. Giannopoulos said he also wanted to tell the president how the LGBTQ community is hurt by politicians callously attacking our right to love or merely exist.

He said now when he thinks of the day he will not remember the person seated at the desk. Giannopoulos said hell remember the students he has taught and the other teachers with him that day, including one who presented Trump with letters from her refugee student, pleading with him to hear their voices.

Read more here:
Bold, Gay Teacher Of The Year Photo Bombs Donald Trump With Fan - HuffPost

Im starting to suspect that Donald Trump may not have been right when he said, You know, Im like a smart person. The evidence continues to mount that he is far from smart so far, in fact, that he may not be capable of carrying out his duties as president.

There is, for example, the story of how Trump met with the pastors of two major Presbyterian churches in New York. I did very, very well with evangelicals in the polls, he bragged. When the pastors told Trump they werent evangelicals, he demanded to know, What are you then? They told him they were mainline Presbyterians. But youre all Christians? he asked. Yes, they had to assure him, Presbyterians are Christians. The kicker: Trump himself is Presbyterian.

Or the story of how Trump asked the editors of the Economist whether they had ever heard of the phrase priming the pump. Yes, they assured him, they had. I havent heard it, Trump continued. I mean, I just I came up with it a couple of days ago, and I thought it was good. The phrase has been in widespread use since at least the 1930s.

Or the story of how, after arriving in Israel from Saudi Arabia, Trump told his hosts, We just got back from the Middle East.

These arent examples of stupidity, you may object, but of ignorance. This has become a favorite talking point of Trumps enablers. House Speaker Paul Ryan, for example, excused Trumps attempts to pressure FBI Director James Comey into dropping a criminal investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on the grounds that the presidents new at this and supposedly didnt realize that he was doing anything wrong. But Trump has been president for nearly five months now, and he has shown no capacity to learn on the job.

More broadly, Trump has had a lifetime 71 years and access to Americas finest educational institutions (hes a graduate of the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School, he never tires of reminding us) to learn things. And yet he doesnt seem to have acquired even the most basic information that a high school student should possess. Recall that Trump said that Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895, was an example of somebody whos done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more. He also claimed that Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War, was really angry that he saw what was happening in regard to the Civil War.

Why does he know so little? Because he doesnt read books or even long articles. I never have, he proudly told a reporter last year. Im always busy doing a lot. As president, Trumps intelligence briefings have been dumbed down, denuded of nuance, and larded with maps and pictures because he cant be bothered to read a lot of words. Hed rather play golf.

The surest indication of how not smart Trump is that he thinks his inability or lack of interest in acquiring knowledge doesnt matter. He said last year that he reaches the right decisions with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words common sense, because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.

Hows that working out? Theres a reason why surveys show more support for Trumps impeachment than for his presidency. From his catastrophically ill-conceived executive order on immigration to his catastrophically ill-conceived firing of Comey, his administration has been one disaster after another. And those fiascos can be ascribed directly to the presidents lack of intellectual horsepower.

How could Trump fire Comey knowing that the FBI director could then testify about the improper requests Trump had made to exonerate himself and drop the investigation of Flynn? And in case there was any doubt about Trumps intent, he dispelled it by acknowledging on TV that he had the Russia thing in mind when firing the FBI director. Thats tantamount to admitting obstruction of justice. Is this how a smart person behaves? If Trump decides to fire the widely respected special counsel Robert Mueller, he will only be compounding this stupidity.

Or what about Trumps response to the June 3 terrorist attack in London? He reacted by tweeting his support for the original Travel Ban, rather than the watered down, politically correct version under review by the Supreme Court. Legal observers including Kellyanne Conways husband instantly saw that Trump was undermining his own case, because the travel ban had been revised precisely in order to pass judicial scrutiny. Indeed, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in refusing to reinstate the travel ban on June 12, cited Trumps tweets against him. Is this how a smart person behaves?

You could argue that Trumps lack of acumen is actually his saving grace, because he would be much more dangerous if he were cleverer in implementing his radical agenda. But you can also make the case that his vacuity is imperiling American security.

Trump shared code-word information with Russias foreign minister, apparently without realizing what he was doing. In the process, he may have blown Americas best source of intelligence on Islamic State plots a top-secret Israeli penetration of the militant groups computers.

Trump picked a fight on Twitter with Qatar, apparently not knowing that this small, oil-rich emirate is host to a major U.S. air base that is of vital importance in the air war against the Islamic State.

Trump criticized Londons mayor, Sadiq Khan, based on a blatant misreading of what Khan said in the aftermath of the June 3 attack: The mayor had said there was no reason to be alarmed about a heightened police presence on the streets not, as Trump claimed, about the threat of terrorism. In the process, Trump has alienated British public opinion and may have helped the anti-American Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, win votes in Britains general election.

Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord apparently because he thinks that global warming a scientifically proven fact is a hoax. His speech announcing the pullout demonstrated that he has no understanding of what the Paris accord actually is a nonbinding compact that does not impose any costs on the United States.

Trump failed to affirm Article V, a bedrock of NATO, during his visit to Brussels, apparently because he labors under the misapprehension that European allies owe the United States and NATO vast sums of money. In fact, NATO members are now increasing their defense spending, but the money will not go to the United States or to the alliance; it will go to their own armed forces. Trump has since said he supports Article V, but his initial hesitation undermines American credibility and may embolden Russia.

Trump supporters used to claim that sage advisors could make up for his shortcomings. But he is proving too willful and erratic to be steered by those around him who know better. As Maggie Haberman of the New York Times notes: Trump doesnt want to be controlled. In [the] campaign, [he] would often do [the] opposite of what he was advised to do, simply because it was opposite.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet certify that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, he can be removed with the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses. That wont happen, because Republicans are too craven to stand up to Trump. But on the merits perhaps it should. After nearly five months in office, Trump has given no indication that he possesses the mental capacity to be president.

Photo credit:Tom Pennington/Getty Images

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Donald Trump Is Proving Too Stupid to Be President - Foreign Policy (blog)

An abstract, in-case-of-emergency-break-glass executive order drafted by the Trump administration in March may become real-world applicable as the president, raging publicly at his Justice Department, mulls firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has twice rewritten an executive order that outlines the order of succession at the Justice Department once after President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend his travel ban, and then again two months later. The executive order outlines a list of who would be elevated to the position of acting attorney general if the person up the food chain recuses himself, resigns, gets fired or is no longer in a position to serve.

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In the past, former Justice Department officials and legal experts said, the order of succession is no more than an academic exercise a chain of command applicable only in the event of an attack or crisis when government officials are killed and it is not clear who should be in charge.

But Trump and the Russia investigation that is tightening around him have changed the game.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already recused himself from overseeing the investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russian operatives, after it was revealed that he failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. And Trump started his morning on Friday by appearing to take a public shot at his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who has increasingly become the target of his impulsive anger.

I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt, the president tweeted.

The Justice Department said in a statement on Friday that there are no current plans for a recusal, but Rosenstein has said in the past that he would back away from overseeing Muellers investigation if his role in the ouster of former FBI Director James Comey becomes a conflict.

That has legal experts closely examining the dry executive order to figure out who might be next up to bat, or, as Democratic lawyers and consultants view it, who might serve as Trumps next sacrificial lamb.

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We know Rachel Brand is the next victim, said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, referring to the former George W. Bush official who was recently confirmed as associate attorney general, the third-highest position in the Justice Department.

For those of us who have high confidence in Rachel the more confidence you have in someone in this role, the less long you think theyll last, said Wittes, who said he considers Brand a friend. That does put a very high premium on the question of who is next.

That question, however, has become more complicated because the Trump administration has been slow to fill government positions and get those officials confirmed. Typically, the solicitor general would be next in line after the associate attorney general, followed by the list of five assistant U.S. attorneys, the order of which would be determined by the attorney general. But none of those individuals have been confirmed by the Senate, and they would be unable to serve as acting attorney general without Senate confirmation.

Because of that, the executive order comes into play one that puts next in line after Brand the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Dana Boente. Boente, a career federal prosecutor and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was tapped last April to serve as the interim head of the Justice Departments national security division, which oversees the FBIs Russia investigation.

Boente, who was briefly thrust into the no. 2 spot at the Justice Department after Yates was fired, was also tasked with phoning Preet Bharara, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to deliver the unexpected news that he was fired. At the time, Boente also vowed to defend Trumps travel ban in the future.

Boente is followed, on the succession list, by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, John Stuart Bruce; and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, John Parker. Both are career prosecutors who are serving in their posts on an interim basis, until a presidential appointment is made. But they would not need to be Senate confirmed to take over.

It was not clear why the Trump administration chose those three U.S. attorneys to be in the succession line. During the Obama administration, sources familiar with the drafting of the old executive order said, the positions were chosen based on geographic diversity, and purposely included big cities where officials assumed there would be a talented attorney capable of stepping in: The U.S. attorneys on the succession list were from Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles.

Some former Justice Department officials said they would find it inconceivable for Trump to clean house, or to fire Mueller even taking into account the sometimes erratic behavior of the commander in chief.

This president is so unpredictable, its hard to say, said Emily Pierce, a former Justice Department official in the Obama administration. It would be the craziest thing hes done to date if he were to start firing the special counsel or Rosenstein. Im trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that he realizes how much trouble he may be in and that with the firing of Comey, he wouldnt do that.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General nominee Rod Rosenstein and Rachel Brand, then a nominee for associate attorney general, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 7. Brand is considered the next person in the executive order at the Justice Department. | Getty

But others were less willing to predict the actions of a president who prides himself on being unpredictable. At the rate we're going, it's clearly possible, because you could go through a number of people in one go depending on the things that are asked of them, said Jane Chong, a national security and law associate at the Hoover Institution. If Rosenstein had refused to write the memo [laying out the case for Comeys firing], you can imagine him being fired, and you can imagine Brand doing the same thing. Its not difficult to see a scenario like that playing out down the line, Chong said.

In Washington circles, the comparison being made is between Trumps desire to rid himself of Mueller, at potentially any cost, and the Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate, in 1973, when the attorney general and the deputy attorney general both resigned after refusing to obey President Richard Nixons order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It fell to the solicitor general at the time, Robert Bork, to do the deed.

I think the Watergate scenario would make most self-respecting lawyers loath to put themselves in the role that Bork ended up playing, said Brian Fallon, a former Obama Justice Department and Hillary Clinton spokesman. Most career-minded independent lawyers that have high regard for the Justice Department as an institution would be loath to be the modern-day equivalent to Bork.

But Trump, too, is cognizant of the comparison to Nixon, according to one adviser. The president, who friends said does not enjoy living in Washington and is strained by the demanding hours of the job, is motivated to carry on because he doesnt want to go down in history as a guy who tried and failed, said the adviser. He doesnt want to be the second president in history to resign.

A White House spokeswoman referred queries to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

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Trump threatens to break the glass on DOJ succession plan - Politico