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Beneath that wig and bronzer, Alec Baldwin appears to have actual sympathy for Donald Trump, whom the actor has been expertly impersonating for months now on Saturday Night Live. At least, Baldwin seems to have sympathy for the president when it comes to matters of social media.

In a new interview with USA Today, Baldwin offers Trump some Twitter advice, even drawing upon his own experiences with the social-media platform.

The President of the United States should have his office do the tweeting, suggests Baldwin, while promoting his new animated movie The Boss Baby, in theaters March 31. I had a very strange relationship with Twitter, because in the beginning, I thought it was an opportunity for me to communicate directly with my audience. And I tried to do that.

Therefore when people picked a fight with me, whether they were mean to me or they spit on me in the digital world, I got angry,continues Baldwin. And I would get into these rants with people. And I stopped and said to myself, What the hell am I doing? And you let it go."

Indeed, in 2013, Baldwin explained his decision to quit Twitter to Vanity Fair. Fortunately for Baldwins 200,000 followers, though, the Emmy winner ultimately returned to the platform after coming to a realization about social media.

No matter what you do, youre never going to be able to control the opinions of all of these people, Baldwin continues. They hate, because that is what they need to do, my political opposites.

And what might Trump do with all of that potential free time he would have on his (diminutive) hands should a staff member relieve him of Tweeting duties?

I think, What would I do if I were president? Baldwin continues. If I were president, I would really wake up every day and think, How can I help the most people in this country get ahead?

Although Baldwins frequent cameos have bolstered Saturday Night Live ratings in recent months, the actor recently suggested that he will be retiring his impersonation soonat least on television.

Fear not, though. Baldwin has another Trump-parody project in the works: a satirical book, co-authored by Kurt Andersen , titled You Cant Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump. According to a statement from Penguin Press, Baldwin will even do the honors of voicing the audio book in character.

Read more:
Alec Baldwin Offers Donald Trump Heartfelt Twitter Advice - Vanity Fair

President Trump aboard the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford last week.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY SAUL LOEB / AFP / GETTY

On November 26, 2010, in Portland, Oregon, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a nineteen-year-old Somali-born American citizen, stood near the citys Pioneer Courthouse and punched numbers into a cell phone. He thought the phone would set off a bomb planted nearby, at a crowded Christmas-tree lighting ceremony. In fact, Mohamud had been duped by a months-long F.B.I. counterterrorism sting operation. Agents arrested him.

In 2013, after a two-week trial, a jury convicted Mohamud of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison. It was only after his trial that the government notified the court that some of the evidence it had used in the case had been obtained under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which can allow for warrantless surveillance of Americans communicating with foreigners targeted for intelligence collection.

Mohamuds lawyers argued that his conviction should be thrown out because, among other reasons, the use of FISA evidence violated the defendants Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search. Last December, a federal appeals-court panel in the Ninth Circuit ruled against Mohamud. It held that it was fine for the government to use evidence gathered without a warrant at a criminal trial because the collection had occurred incidentally in the course of a permissible operation and would, in any event, have been allowed by the foreign-intelligence exception to warrant requirements.

The appeals decision was, in a sense, aligned with the Trump Administrations incendiary, get-tough rhetoric about terrorism. Yet the fact that evidence scooped up by the American surveillance state while it spies on foreign intelligence operatives might end up in a criminal case brought against an American citizen should give President Trump pause, particularly given the F.B.I.s reported ongoing investigation into alleged contacts between Trump advisers and Russian intelligence and government officials.

The Trump Administration has already seen its first national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, resign, after it was revealed that the contents of a conversation between Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, Russias Ambassador to Washington, contradicted descriptions Flynn gave in public and to Vice-President Mike Pence. Flynn, a career military-intelligence officer, should have known that Kislyak was probably a target for foreign-intelligence collection by the United States, and that any conversation with him might be intercepted and transcribed. Flynns apparent sloppiness cost him his office, but his fate provides a broader warning for any Trump advisers who have consorted with Russians involved in intelligence operations aimed at the U.S.

On February 14th, the Times reported that phone records and intercepted calls showed that members of Trumps Presidential campaign and other advisers had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials in the year leading up to Trumps election. It isnt clear how detailed this evidence is, why it was collected in the first place, or whether it provides any indication of improper conduct. (James Clapper, who served as the director of National Intelligence until Trumps Inauguration, told Meet the Press on Sunday that, at the time he left office, he knew of no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.)

In any event, the context for the F.B.I.s investigation is different than it would have been two decades agoand not only for Trump. Since 2001, because of the U.S.A. Patriot Act and other expansions to counterterrorism authorities and programs, it has become easier for the government to use information collected for intelligence purposes, with or without a warrant, to support criminal prosecutions against any American. Typically, this happens in cases that touch upon terrorism, intelligence operations, or espionage, but the charges at the end of these murky trails of evidence collection may also involve finance, perjury, and even press leaks.

Section 702 of FISA is one of the main instruments of that surveillance policy. It was enacted in its current form in 2008, and authorizes the Attorney General and the director of National Intelligence to target individuals who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents and who are believed to be overseas. Under its procedures, however, investigators can collect phone and e-mail records from U.S. companies, among other things. This is one of the legal frameworks for secret programs of large-scale electronic and phone-record collection, such as the ones exposed by Edward Snowden. The law is supposed to protect against abuses such as reverse targetingthat is, for example, setting up surveillance of a Russian spy abroad when the real purpose is to collect evidence against Americans with whom the spy might be in touchyet the system is highly classified and not subject to scrutiny in open courts.

The President and his advisers seem genuinely worried that a deep stateat the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., of the kind Oliver Stone might imagine, is out to get them. In their anxiety, it might be helpful if, instead of tweeting out wild and fanciful accusations about wiretapping at Trump Tower, they were to reflect on the actual engineering of the surveillance state and the much wider dangers to liberty and due process it poses.

Typically, the defendants at risk when the government overreaches with surveillance operationssuch as Mohamud, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee when he was a small boyare relatively powerless. Trump cited his case, without naming him, to justify his revised executive order suspending the entry of all refugees and people from six countries, including Somalia. Yet the risks of abuse extend to everyone. Speaking about Mohamuds conviction, Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, noted to the Oregonian that the appellate courts decision to accept warrantless evidence rests on the faulty premise that Americans lose the core protections of the Fourth Amendment when they communicate with relatives, friends, business associates, or anyone else abroad.

Because of nervousness about Section 702s reach and potential for misuse, Congress provided for its expiration at the end of 2017, unless a new bill is introduced to renew itwhich the President would need to sign into law. There are libertarians and Republican officeholders suspicious of Big Brother who may challenge a renewal, and there are many Democrats who will warn against putting such powers in the hands of a man like Donald Trump. Yet promoters of the surveillance authorities in intelligence agencies claim that Section 702 is vital to counterterrorism and counterintelligence. It is hard to imagine the Republican-led Congress or the Trump Administration giving up the powers it confers, given the politics the Republicans have constructed around promoting fear of terrorism. And yet if the F.B.I. is still pressing Trumps advisers about their contacts with Russian intelligence by the time a reauthorization bill lands on his desk for signature, later this year, the President may have reason to think twice about what sort of warrant he is signing.

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Donald Trump Meets the Surveillance State - The New Yorker

After President Trumps latest headline-grabbing tweet storm on everything from wiretaps to an erroneous claim on Gitmo detainees released by President Obama, the White House said Tuesday the president has no intention of backing off or backing down.

I think the voters made it clear, one of the things that they appreciate about him is his ability to be authentic and speak very forcefully and very directly to the American people, said White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Mr. Trump began his day on Twitter at 7:04 a.m. Tuesday with this comment: 122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!

The tweet came a few minutes after a story on Fox & Friends about Gitmo detainees who returned to the fight. But the Fox story didnt specify that 113 of the 122 prisoners who rejoined the fight had been released by the administration of George W. Bush, and nine had been released by Mr. Obama.

Mr. Spicer acknowledged the presidents tweet was in error. Obviously the president meant in totality, he said.

As a candidate last year, Mr. Trump pledged to keep open the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for terrorism suspects and to send more detainees there.

The president followed up that tweet with others about Obamacare (imploding fast!), a new chapter of American Greatness under his leadership, how Russia ran over Mr. Obama for eight years, and how FAKE NEWS was wrong about big infighting in his administration.

We are getting along great, and getting major things done! Mr. Trump tweeted at 10:16 a.m., the end of his three-hour tweet storm.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump had jolted Democrats, some Republicans and much of his staff by tweeting from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida about Mr. Obama allegedly having ordered wiretaps on the Trump campaign last year at its headquarters at Trump Tower. He offered no basis for his claim.

Those tweets generated two days worth of news coverage, and reporters still had questions for Mr. Spicer about it Tuesday.

Asked whether Mr. Trump should stop tweeting about wiretaps and Arnold Schwarzeneggers poor ratings on Celebrity Apprentice, Mr. Spicer rejected the assertion that the White House isnt focused on whats important.

I would say that we have been focused, Mr. Spicer said. Were here talking about Obamacare, the need to drive down the cost and [increase] access for every American. Thats a pretty significant thing to be focused on.

He noted that Monday was devoted mostly to Mr. Trumps new immigration order on temporarily banning travelers from six predominantly Muslim nations. He said Mr. Trumps first six weeks in office have been very productive.

The presidents talked to almost 50 world leaders, hes had 30-plus executive actions on all sorts of stuff from regulatory aspects to things that will create more jobs, he said. I think thats a fairly focused effort.

Another reporter asked Mr. Spicer whether the president would retract his claim of Mr. Obama wiretapping his campaign headquarters.

Why would he withdraw it until its adjudicated [by Congress]? Mr. Spicer replied. He said the president absolutely has no regrets about making the claim, which would be a felony by Mr. Obama if true.

Mr. Spicer also said the president isnt likely to change his social media habits.

Thats an aspect I think that was central to why he was elected, Mr. Spicer said. Hes not a canned politician thats going to give the same staid answers over and over again.

But even the president, who prides his status as an outsider who launched a movement, acknowledges from time to time that hes a politician. During a strategy meeting Tuesday afternoon with House Republican lawmakers on repealing and replacing Obamacare, Mr. Trump said he wanted no more excuses for delaying legislative action.

Were all now I can proudly say Im a politician, the president said to laughter. Im a politician. But were going to get it done and youre the leaders that really will get it done for all of us and for the American people.

Read more here:
Donald Trump has no intention to back off tweets - Washington Times

The new travel ban comes six weeks after Trump's original executive order caused chaos at airports nationwide before it was blocked by federal courts. It removes out language in the original order that indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and called for prioritizing the admission of refugees who are religious minorities in their home countries. That provision drew criticism of a religious test for entry and would have prioritized Christians over Muslims fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East.

The new ban, which takes effect March 16, also explicitly exempts citizens of the six banned countries who are legal US permanent residents or have valid visas to enter the US -- including those whose visas were revoked during the original implementation of the ban, senior administration officials said.

"We cannot compromise our nation's security by allowing visitors entry when their own governments are unable or unwilling to provide the information we need to vet them responsibly, or when those governments actively support terrorism," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday.

The new measures will block citizens of Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from obtaining visas for at least 90 days. The order also suspends admission of refugees into the US for 120 days, directing US officials to improve vetting measures for a program that is already widely regarded as extremely stringent.

Trump signed the executive order earlier Monday in the Oval Office outside the view of reporters and news cameras, after more than three weeks of repeated delays, the latest of which came after White House officials decided last week to delay the signing to avoid cutting into positive coverage of Trump's joint address to Congress.

The delays also came amid an intense lobbying effort from Iraqi government officials, including from the country's prime minister, to remove Iraq from the original seven-state list of banned countries.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iraq's removal from the list came after an intense review from the State Department to improve vetting of Iraqi citizens in collaboration with the Iraqi government, though he did not specify how vetting had been improved.

"The United States welcomes this kind of close cooperation," he said. "This revised order will bolster the security of the United States and our allies."

The rollout of the revised travel ban marks an important moment for the administration, which has little room for error after the chaotic debut of the original plan. That failure raised questions about the new White House's capacity to govern and to master the political intricacies needed to manage complicated political endeavors in Washington. It also brought Trump into conflict with the judiciary in the first sign of how constitutional checks and balances could challenge his vision of a powerful presidency built on expansive executive authority.

The original order came under intense criticism as an attempt to bar Muslims from entering the country, and Trump's call during the campaign for a "Muslim Ban" was cited in court cases attacking the ban.

The new order does not prioritize religious minorities when considering refugee admissions cases.

Administration officials Monday stressed they do not see the ban as targeting a specific religion.

"(The order is) not any way targeted as a Muslim ban ... we want to make sure everyone understands that," an official told reporters.

"The Department of Justice believes that this executive order just as the first executive order is a lawful and proper exercise of presidential authority," Sessions said.

Democrats responded by calling Trump's order a repeat version of the first attempt.

"Here we go again...Muslim Ban 2.0 #NoBanNoWall" tweeted Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives.

The newly crafted order also revealed that the administration wasn't just paying attention to the legal criticism in the courts, but also recalibrating in light of the heavy political fire they faced after the first order's messy rollout.

While administration lawyers argued the original travel ban went into effect immediately to prevent terrorists from rushing into the country, the revised ban will phase in after 10 days. The previous order will be rescinded on that date.

Trump had previously said he opposed giving any advance notice of the ban.

The White House also abandoned the sense of urgency with which it implemented the first travel ban, delaying the signing of a new executive order multiple times over the last three weeks. Politics also came into play as White House officials delayed the signing from last Wednesday in part to allow positive coverage of the President's joint address to Congress to continue uninterrupted.

White House officials collaborated for several weeks with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and kept congressional leaders apprised of their progress this time around after the White House drew a backlash for keeping Congress and relevant federal agencies almost entirely in the dark during the first rollout.

To bolster its national security claims, the new executive order also states FBI has reported that approximately 300 people who entered the United States as refugees are "currently the subjects of counter-terrorism investigations."

"The fact remains that we are not immune to terrorist threats and that our enemies often use our own freedoms and generosity against us," Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said. "We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives."

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said the ban "has the same fundamental flaws" as the first order.

"We know that country of origin is a poor predictor of a propensity to commit acts of terror. If it were, Pakistan has been a far more problematic source of attack planning and would be at the top of the President's list, but that country merits not even a mention in the order," Schiff said in a statement.

But the new order was also delayed in part because of a debate within the administration over how to handle Iraq.

Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and national security adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster had all advocated for Iraq to be removed from the Trump administration's list of banned countries in the new executive order for diplomatic reasons, including Iraq's role in fighting ISIS, sources told CNN's Elise Labott and Evan Perez. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly also supported the move.

Iraq was removed from the revised travel ban executive order after intensive lobbying from the Iraqi government at the highest levels, according to a senior US official.

That included a phone call between Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on February 10 and an in-person conversation between Abadi and Vice President Mike Pence in Munich on February 18.

Those conversations were followed by discussions between Tillerson and members of the Iraqi government about vetting measures in place that would prevent suspected terrorists from leaving Iraq and coming to the United States. Iraq did not implement new measures; rather, the country provided more detail to US officials about how it screens travelers.

In Trump's call with Abadi, the President vowed to seek a resolution to his counterpart's concerns about his citizens' being unable to enter the United States, according to a readout of the phone call from Baghdad. The US official said Trump asked Tillerson to get greater clarity on vetting measures in Iraq.

Trump also faced pressure to remove Iraq from the order from some American national security officials, who argued the restriction burdened a key anti-ISIS partner. Some of those voices were holdovers from the Obama administration.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry welcomed reports of its removal from the list of countries affected by the travel ban.

"(The) Iraqi Foreign Ministry expresses deep relief regarding the executive order that was issued by the American president Donald Trump, which excludes the Iraqis from the travel ban to the United States," said Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ahmad Jamal. "This is considered an important step in the right direction that strengthen and reinforces the strategic alliance between Baghdad and Washington in many fields, in particular the fight against terrorism."

This story is breaking and will be updated.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Kelly's name.

CNN's Kareem Khadder contributed from Erbil. Stephen Collinson contributed from Washington.

Originally posted here:
US President Donald Trump signs new travel ban, exempts Iraq - CNN

But we are not going to be played like this.

Jamiel Shaw Sr. at Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017. (Ap Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Last week, Donald Trump stood in front of a joint session of Congress and announced his guest, Jamiel Shaw Jr. As the camera zoomed in on him, Shaw smiled with humility, and those around him stood up and clapped in his honor. Jamiels 17-year-old son was viciously murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member, who had just been released from prison, Trump said. Jamiel Shaw Jr. was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential, who was getting ready to go to college where he would have excelled as a great quarterback. But he never got the chance.

The joint session wasnt Shaws first appearance with Trump. He tagged along with him on the campaign trail and even appeared in a Willie Hortonstyle campaign ad that touted Trumps tough-on-immigration approach. Trump is the only one saying: Youre gonna be dealt with, Shaw says in the ad. But, as Bustle pointed out, between 2010 and 2014 the Department of Homeland Security counted only 121 people charged with murder after having been previously held by immigration officials, about 0.001 percent of the total number of undocumented immigrants in this country.

Trump chose to highlight Shaws case not because he wanted to emphasize the tragedy that is murder, or even just to stir up unfounded fears about the criminality of undocumented immigrants generally. He was doing something else too, something nefariously brilliant. By using Shaw, Trump was specifically pitting black Americans against undocumented immigrants, telling us that brown, undocumented immigrants will kill our families too. In doing so, Trump told us that our families matter, that we are Americans. For once, black Americans werent the subtext of dog-whistle politics but the intended audience.

The cynicism of this move comes into focus when we look at Trumps actual agenda for black communities. Outside of the tragic stories like Shaws, black Americans dont place quite as high on the chain anywhere else in Trumps America. Take, for example, his recent executive order doubling down on and expanding protections for police officers. The order, Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers, will enforce all Federal laws in order to enhance the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, and define new federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against officers. The order also aims to create definitions of new crimes of violence against officers and establish mandatory minimums for existing ones. Billed as a way to bolster safety and protection, the order is really a reaction against the Black Lives Matter movement and the Department of Justices agenda under President Obama, which investigated and scrutinized police departments across the country for infringing upon the civil rights of black and brown Americans.

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There was also Trumps New Deal for Black America, a last-ditch effort to appeal to black voters days before the election. One of its proposals, Protection from Illegal Immigration stated that No group has been more economically harmed by decades of illegal immigration than low-income African-American workers. But other than rhetorically setting these two communities against each other in a race to the bottom, Trumps plan offers very little to actually create better jobs for black Americans, and many of his proposalsfrom school choice to beefing up policing to financial deregulation to ignoring climate changewould disproportionately hurt black Americans. In other words, Trump doesnt want a new deal for black Americahe just wants to fasten us in tighter to the old deal of low-wage, insecure, go-nowhere jobs.

The champion of black America Donald Trump is not. Instead, he is continuing to seize on the vulnerability of communities that are disenfranchised, that suffer from higher rates of joblessness, poverty, inadequate housing, and subpar education.

Donald Trump isnt the first to pit Americans against one another for political gain. For a moment after reconstruction in the 1890s, a populist movement emerged, one that lead to some alliances between poor whites and blacks in the South, particularly among farmers. Tom Watson, a white Georgia politician, delivered a speech to a crowd of black and white farmers, highlighting their common interests. You are made to hate each other because on that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both, he said. You are deceived and blinded because you do not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system that beggars you both. Watsons was an economic message: The colored tenant is in the same boat as the white tenant, the colored laborer with the white laborer and that the accident of color can make no difference in the interests of farmers, croppers and laborers. The alliance didnt grow large enough to change the course of American history. Powerful white landowners were able to convince poor whites of their racial superiority, and Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan would cement an America that privileges racial unity over class. Later, Watson himself turned on the black Americans he once supported.

Trump knows something, like Watson did, about black Americans: We will never stop seeking out first-class citizenship. But history has also taught us to be wary of the smoke and mirrors deployed by politicians like Trump. Baiting black people and trying to pit us against Mexicans wont work when all of Trumps other policies are ruinous to black communities. Trump touts a new deal for black America, but he forgets that while blacks benefited from the original New Deala set of economic recovery programs that lifted America out of the Great Depressionit was not intended for us. Trump is right about one thing: Black people do want a new deal. But not one that reinforces our place as second-class citizens with a pernicious mandate to trample on the backs of those without any citizenship at all.

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Donald Trump Is Trying to Play Black Americans - The Nation.