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Former Deputy National Security Adviser For Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, pictured here in 2016, said recently that he doubted former President Barack Obama would respond directly to President Donald Trumps announcement on Cuba. | AP Photo

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

06/15/2017 04:13 PM EDT

Updated 06/15/2017 06:41 PM EDT

The architect of President Barack Obamas Cuba policy says President Donald Trumps proposed changes are likely largely toothless and a waste of time.

But Ben Rhodes, Obamas former deputy national security adviser, said Trump's clampdown on travel and trade with Cuba will nonetheless damage Americas standing in the worldand represent an incoherent stand on promoting democracy from someone who has supported leaders like Turkish President Recep Erdoan and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

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Nobody believes that President Trump has a global concern about democracy, Rhodes said.

Rhodes, who works for Obamas post-presidency office and remains a top adviser, said he was speaking only for himself during a small meeting with reporters held in the office of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). He said he doubted Obama would respond directly to Trumps announcement on Cuba.

Asked about sparking yet another spat between Trump and Obama, Rhodes said, "that dynamic has been more on the part of the current administration than the former administration."

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Responding to leaks that the new Trump policy, to be announced Friday in Miami, will require American tourists and companies to track the owners of any business with which money has been exchanged in order to ensure no money is going to entities controlled by the Cuban government, Rhodes said that would require significant new staff and financial resources to audit.

Given that, Rhodes predicted, they may end up with a situation where they incur all of the symbolic cost around the world and inside of Cuba for modest or unenforceable changes.

Those costs, Rhodes said, encompass not being prepared for coming regime change in Cuba, empowering hard-liners in Havana who benefit from a fight with America, diminishing the gains in Americas reputation in Latin America that came from Obamas Cuba reopening, and taking another step away from American leadership in the world just two weeks after announcing the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Even though this may be a mini-rollback, you are sending the wrong message that we want to go back to the old days, Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar expects that the bill to lift the travel ban with Cuba, reintroduced in the Senate, could get more support than the 55 senators currently backing it, but she worries about the anti-Cuba climate the president is creating, and the likelihood he would veto the bill may dampen that.

What Im concerned about is that reverse of momentum, not with the public, but in the House and Senate, she said.

Rhodes snapped back at the idea, suggested by critics of the Cuba reopening such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), that he and the Obama administration were snookered by the Castro regime into a bad deal.

Importantly, Rhodes said, the United States neither lifted the embargo nor returned Guantanamo Baythe fundamental things that really have been the thorn in the Cuban governments side remained in place, he argued, adding that the Cubans pushed him hard on both during his negotiations.

Rhodes said that what the regime lost was the ability to position itself as fighting the United States.

Now, Trump is giving that back to them, Rhodes said. They will be able to say, Theyve gone back to being the United States that beats up on people and tells them what to do.

CORRECTION: A previous version of the headline on this story misidentified Ben Rhodes title in the Obama administration. The headline has been updated.

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Obama's former deputy national security adviser calls Trump's ...

WASHINGTON The Trump administration formalized an immigration policy shift on Thursday evening that was notable for what it didnt do as much as what it did. The Department of Homeland Security rescinded DAPA, a never-implemented program that would have allowed some undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to stay in the country.

But more significantly, it left in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a policy that President Donald Trump promised to eliminate, and one that has shielded hundreds of thousands from deportation.

By Friday, the Trump administration was insisting that the president hadnt gone back on his promise to end DACA. And even defenders of the program remain cautious about its future prospects. Still,nearly 150 days into his time in the White House, Trump hasnt rescinded DACA not on Day One of his presidency, as he pledged during the campaign; not when he radically reshaped immigration policy early in his administration; and not on Thursday.

That Trump has been unwilling or unable to move on this front is both a product of an intense, at times underappreciated, lobbying effort by immigration advocates and a testament to the difficulties of removing a benefit once it is in place.

Their stories and their contributions are the most significant thing protecting DACA, Cecilia Muoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama, said. On some level, it is widely understood that these young people are Americans in every way except on paper. ... Thats actually the most important thing, and that was a major contributor to DACA in the first place. The power of that is clearly enduring.

The groundwork for DACA was laid more than a decade before 2012, when Obama created the program. Young immigrants began to come out as undocumented, telling their friends, classmates and lawmakers their stories of moving to the U.S. as children, often not knowing they were here without authorization.

In 2001, their stories inspired legislation called the Dream Act, which would give them a path to becoming citizens. They fought for passage of the bill for years, with more and more of them deciding to tell the world they were undocumented, holding protests in their college caps and gowns, or talking to the media about their dreams of joining the military.

This came close to working. The Dream Act passed the House in 2010. But it failed in the Senate.

Under intense pressure from Dreamers and immigrant-rights activists to do something in the wake of that failure, Obama created DACA in 2012, arguing he had the power to grant temporary permission to some who would not be a priority for deportation so he could focus on deporting criminals and threats. Nearly 790,000 young undocumented immigrantshave received DACA permits since the program began, allowing them to work legally, get drivers licenses and live without immediate fear of deportation.

Republicans were furious when Obama announced DACA, and threatened to dismantle and defund it. Their efforts were repeatedly blocked by Democrats and rejected by Obama. But by 2016, Trump had capitalized on the brewing anger within conservative circles, bashing DACA and promising to end it on his way to securing the GOP presidential nomination.

After he was elected, immigrant-rights activists immediately began to rally their allies to protect their gains. DACA, said Philip Wolgin, who works on immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, was the most visible thing on the chopping block.

A group of college and university presidents called for Trump to maintain DACA. The American Medical Association also voiced support for Dreamers, some of whom had enrolled in medical school after its creation. United We Dream, a youth-led immigrant-rights group, asked lawmakers to press Trumps eventual nominees to head DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on plans for DACA. Senators also crafted a bipartisan bill to maintain protections if Trump did get rid of DACA.

It was about reminding people that Dreamers are part of America.

790,000 people is no small number, Wolgin said. These are real people. ... You have employers talking about this, you have educators, other folks talking about how these are people in communities. These are people who have built their lives and we cant end this.

United We Dream also hoped to get the attention of Ivanka Trump, the presidents daughter and now a senior White House adviser. They didnt think they could appeal to the president on a personal level. But they knew Ivanka Trump was interested in womens rights, so they tried to get her attention through various connections, such as advocacy groups, and by placing op-eds and rallying in New York, said Greisa Martinez, United We Dream advocacy director.

They wanted to get to the president through politics.

For us, the goal was really clearly to make it a political liability, Martinez said.

Obama got in on the lobbying, too. When he spoke to Trump during the transition, he made an effort to explain who Dreamers were and why they should be protected, Muoz said. He said at a press conference soon after the election that Trump and his administration should think long and hard before they are endangering the status of what for all practical purposes are American kids. In his final press conference as president, he promised to speak out should Trump end DACA and try to deport Dreamers.

Whether in response to Obama, or the advocacy pressures, or simply because he rethought his campaign position, Trump began to take a softer tone when talking about Dreamers once elected. He began speaking about them in ways that supporters do: as people brought here by their parents who simply want to work and attend school. In December 2016, Trump pledged to work something out for them without formally rescinding his campaign pledge to end DACA.

When he assumed office, he left the program untouched on Day One and side-stepped it when issuing an executive order in January that ramped up deportation efforts. According to lawmakers, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly seemed to take credit for the continuation of DACA, saying he was the best friend the program had. But it wasnt just Kelly or Trump changing their tunes. Most Republicans in Congress who had voted previously to end DACA under Obama stopped making an issue of it.

The Trump administration still wont say that DACA is no longer among their targets, even after Thursdays memo. A DHS spokeswoman said the future of DACA remains under review. And White House spokesman Michael Short insisted in an email to HuffPost that nothing has changed. The only thing that happened was we rescinded DAPA, Short said. Thats it, plain and simple.

And so, Dreamers with DACA still dont feel entirely safe. On Friday, advocates continued to point out that the administration could still get rid of DACA, or could strip current recipients of their status, detain or deport them one by one, as has already happened in some cases. DACAs continuation after Thursdays action was a relief, but it wasnt a victory.

The only certainty in Trumps America is uncertainty and no memoranda changes that, Lorella Praeli, a former Dreamer and director of immigration policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. Theyre trying to distract us with their back-and-forth on DACA as their mass deportation machine proceeds full-speed ahead.

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Trump Killed A Key Obama Immigration Program. But What He ...

Barack Obama taught the principals of radical activist Saul Alinsky at the University of Chicago.

A virtual slush fund of taxpayer money the Obama administration deployed to supportprivate groups that advanced his agenda has been shut down by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Sessions issued a memorandum June 7 to all U.S. attorneys and Justice Department leaders that put an end to the policy of requiring the departments settlements with defendants, particularly corporations, to include donations to non-governmental organizations, Breitbart News reported.

Among the recipients of the funds under Obama, was the radical National Council of La Raza, or The Race, which supports mass illegal immigration.

In 2015, WND published a four-part series exposing the massive shell game with taxpayer funds that, while not new, was perfected by the Obama administration as a means to deploy and reward nonprofit co-laborers in an effort to fulfill the presidents stated aim of radically transforming America.

The federal government has been funding left-wing groups for at least a half-century, ever since the so-called War on Poverty was launched by President Lyndon Johnson.

But President Obama aggressively used taxpayer funds in a way that blurred the line between government functions and political activism, while at the same time fostering a steady increase in the overall size and scope of government.

Another example of the Obama administrations funding and deployment of left-wing groups in governmental functions to carry out its ideological agenda, reported exclusively by WND in 2014, was the IRS hiring of the avowedly progressive Urban Institute, supported by far-left billionaire activist George Soros, to process the Form 990s of nonprofit groups.

At the time, revelations of the IRS targeting of conservative groups that oppose Obamas agenda were continuing to emerge.

Together, the two stories presented a picture of an administration that rewarded its friends, punished its enemies and, in the process, fundamentally changed the character of government.

Community organizations

The practice of funding nonprofits began in the 1970s with the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks and financial institutions that settled cases with the DOJ to give donations tocommunity organizations to offset alleged wrongdoing, Breitbart noted. The practice exploded after the 2008 financial crisis when big banks agreed to massive settlements with Obamas DOJ over alleged unfair lending practices.

A group of congressional Republicans raised concern about the practice, and theircampaigngained momentum under the Trump administration, Breitbart said.

This is a tremendous victory people ought to be very encouraged by, said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, in an interview with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXX host Raheem Kassam.

Schweizer explained that rather than going to a companys victims, the money ended up in the hands of activist groups such as La Raza that used the money for their own efforts, such as voter registration.

These were politically active groups, he said.

Blurring the lines

WNDs series of articles in 2015 exposed the massive shell game with taxpayer funds, which went to progressive groups that share the ideology and political inclinations of a president who looks back warmly on his time as a community organizer in Chicago, including the notorious Media Matters for America, founded by Hillary Clinton ally and Fox News nemesis David Brock.

Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago from 1985 to 1988.

Barack is not a politician first and foremost, first lady Michelle Obama has said. Hes a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.

Another charity that received federal funding was the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a favorite philanthropy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Based in Mountain View, California, it is already was awash in private funds.

On its website, the foundation acknowledged having $4.7 billion in assets under its management.

Zuckerberg pledged in December 2013 to give Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation shares worth $1 billion. He previously gave $500 million worth of Facebook shares to the foundation and another $100 million to the foundation earmarked for public schools in Newark, New Jersey.

WNDs second story showed how taxpayers were funding one of the nations largest health-insurance brokers, which had a significant role in passing Obamacare and became one of its chief cheerleaders.

The third in the series showed how the Obama administration was channeling millions of dollars of taxpayer funds through a propaganda machine that financed organizations such as an educational advocacy group named for President Obamas Marxist law-school mentor, known for his promotion of the radical critical race theory.

The Obama administration had given $16.8 million since 2010 to its allies at a left-wing nonprofit known as the Local Initiatives Support Corp, or LISC.

LISC, in turn, provided grants to many radical groups, including a Chicago-based nonprofit founded by the late Marxist activist Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky is often referred to as the father of left-wing community organizing. His work inspired President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who had a friendship with Alinsky and wrote her college thesis on him.

Saul Alinsky

Alinsky was known for creating a blueprint for revolution, under the banner of social change and organizing, that focused on penetrating existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

In his 1946 handbook Reveille for Radicals he encouraged community organizers to fan the latent hostilities of the poor and search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them. In Rules for Radicals, published in 1971, he advised revolutionaries regarding their adversaries: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

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Trump axes Obama's 'slush fund' for radical agenda

MIAMI President Donald Trump on Friday ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the Caribbean islands military, saying he was canceling former President Barack Obama's "terrible and misguided deal" with Havana.

Laying out his new Cuba policy in a speech in Miami, Trump signed a presidential directive rolling back parts of Obamas historic opening to the Communist-ruled country after a 2014 diplomatic breakthrough between the two former Cold War foes.

But Trump left in place many of Obamas changes, including the reopened U.S. embassy in Havana, even as he sought to show he was making good on a campaign promise to take a tougher line against Cuba, especially over its human rights record.

"We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer," Trump told a cheering crowd in Miamis Cuban-American enclave of Little Havana, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who helped forge the new restrictions on Cuba.

"Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba," Trump declared as he made a full-throated assault on the government of Cuban President Raul Castro.

Cuba later denounced the move as a setback in U.S.-Cuban relations, saying Trump had been badly advised and was resorting to "coercive methods of the past" that were doomed to fail. The government remained willing to engage in "respectful dialogue," it said in a statement.

Trumps revised approach calls for stricter enforcement of a longtime ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists, and seeks to prevent U.S. dollars from being used to fund what the Trump administration sees as a repressive military-dominated government. (tmsnrt.rs/2rBfMTI)

But, facing pressure from U.S. businesses and even some fellow Republicans to avoid turning back the clock completely in relations with Cuba, the president chose to leave intact some of his Democratic predecessor's steps toward normalization.

The new policy bans most U.S. business transactions with the Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, a Cuban conglomerate involved in all sectors of the economy. But it makes some exceptions, including for air and sea travel, according to U.S. officials. This will essentially shield U.S. airlines and cruise lines serving the island.

"We do not want U.S. dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba," Trump said, pledging that U.S. sanctions would not be lifted until Cuba frees political prisoners and holds free elections.

While the changes are far-reaching, they appear to be less sweeping than many U.S. pro-engagement advocates had feared.

Trump based his partial reversal of Obamas Cuba measures largely on human rights grounds.

His critics, however, have questioned why his administration is now singling out Cuba for human rights abuses but downplaying the issue in other parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally Trump visited last month where political parties and protests are banned.

SOME OBAMA POLICIES LEFT IN PLACE

Trump, however, stopped short of breaking diplomatic relations restored in 2015 after more than five decades of hostilities. He also will not cut off recently resumed direct U.S.-Cuba commercial flights or cruise-ship travel, though his more restrictive policy seems certain to dampen new economic ties overall.

The administration, according to one White House official, has no intention of disrupting existing business ventures such as one struck under Obama by Starwood Hotels Inc, which is owned by Marriott International Inc, to manage a historic Havana hotel.

Nor does Trump plan to reinstate limits that Obama lifted on the amount of the islands coveted rum and cigars that Americans can bring home for personal use.

Still, it will be the latest attempt by Trump to overturn parts of Obama's presidential legacy. He has already pulled the United States out of a major international climate treaty and is trying to scrap his predecessor's landmark healthcare program.

When Obama announced the detente in 2014, he said that decades of U.S. efforts to achieve change in Cuba by isolating the island had failed and it was time to try a new approach.

Critics of the rapprochement said Obama was giving too much away without extracting concessions from the Cuban government. Castro's government has clearly stated it does not intend to change its one-party political system.

Trump aides say Obamas efforts amounted to "appeasement" and have done nothing to advance political freedoms in Cuba, while benefiting the Cuban government financially.

"It's hard to think of a policy that makes less sense than the prior administration's terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime," Trump said in Miami.

International human rights groups say, however, that renewed U.S. efforts to isolate the island could worsen the situation by empowering Cuban hard-liners.

The Cuban government, which has made clear it will not be pressured into reforms, had no immediate comment.

But ordinary Cubans said they were crestfallen to be returning to an era of frostier relations with the United States with potential economic fallout for them.

"It's like we are returning to the Cold War," said Cuban designer Idania del Rio, who joined a group of friends in a hotel in Old Havana to watch the speech in English on CNN.

Trump announced his new approach at the Manuel Artime Theater in the heart of the United States' largest Cuban-American and Cuban exile community, whose support aides believe helped him win Florida in the election.

The venue is named after a leader of the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 against Fidel Castros revolutionary government.

I have trust in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to Cuba, said Jorge Saurez, 66, a retired physician in Little Havana.

Trumps vow to keep the broader decades-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba firmly in place drew criticism from some U.S. farmers, especially growers of corn, soybeans and rice. Obamas dtente has already lifted exports and raised hopes for more gains, which they said were now in doubt.

Mexicos foreign ministry urged the United States and Cuba to resolve their differences "via dialogue."

But Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose leftist government is Cuba's main regional ally, slammed Trump's tightening of restrictions as an "offence" against Latin America.

"His speech was aggressive and threatening, ... revealing his contempt and ignorance," President Nicolas Maduro said in a speech. "We reject Donald Trump's declarations against our brother Cuba. It is an offence against Latin America."

The biggest change in travel policy will be that Americans making educational people-to-people trips, one of the most popular authorized categories, can no longer go to the island on their own but only on group tours. Trump's aides said the aim was to close off a path for Americans seeking beach vacations in a country where U.S. tourism is still officially banned.

U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, one of the Republican Party's most vocal advocates for easing rules on U.S. dealings with Cuba, called for a vote on legislation lifting restrictions on American travel there. But the Republican leadership in Congress has long blocked such a move, and it appears unlikely to budge.

Under Trumps order, the Treasury and Commerce departments will be given 30 days to begin writing new regulations, which will not take effect until they are complete.

In contentious deliberations leading up to the new policy, some aides argued that Trump, a former real estate magnate who won the presidency vowing to unleash U.S. business, would have a hard time defending any moves that close off the Cuban market.

But other advisers have contended that it is important to make good on a campaign promise to Cuban-Americans.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Lesley Wroughton and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Sarah Marsh and Marc Frank in Havana, Bernie Woodall in Miami; writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Yara Bayoumy, Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)

YOKOSUKA, Japan U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald sailed back to its base in Yokosuka, with seven of its sailors still missing after it collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship more than three times its size in eastern Japan early on Saturday.

MOSCOW/BAGHDAD Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were skeptical.

Originally posted here:
Trump rolls back parts of what he calls 'terrible' Obama Cuba ...

Photo by Heidi Bohnenkamp, 2012

While Delta Air Lines and Bank of America have dropped their sponsorships of New Yorks Public Theater over a President Trump-inspired staging of Shakespeares Julius Caesar, corporate sponsors at the Guthrie Theater had no public reaction to a 2012 staging that featured a black actor in the role of Caesar.

That production, part of a national tour done in collaboration with the Acting Company of New York, starred Bjorn DuPaty, a tall basketball aficionado who resembles then-President Barack Obama (pictured above).

Caesar is stabbed to death in the middle of the play.

The New York production, staged by Twin Cities-born director Oskar Eustis, was questioned in a tweet by the president's son, Donald J. Trump, Jr.

"I wonder how much of this art is funded by taxpayers? he asked. Serious question, when does art become political speech & does that change things?

The reaction from corporate sponsors was swift.

No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summers free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines values, Delta said Sunday in a statement.

Delta and, before it, Twin Cities-based Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta in 2009, is a longstanding supporter of the Guthrie. It is the theater's official airline, and the title sponsor of the Guthries summer musical, Sunday in the Park with George.

I havent seen the Publics production of the play, but I know the conversation is not about whether its a good production or not, or whether Caesar is a hero or villain, said Guthrie artistic director Joseph Haj. I feel for Oskar [Eustis] and the Public, because its complicated. Corporate sponsors have been vitally important to the health of the American theater theyve been extraordinary partners over many decades. But theres also been a firewall there. Ive never had a conversation with a sponsor that has been around the art-making itself.

Haj worries that the retreat of the sponsors in the face of a tweet by the presidents namesake son will have a chilling effect on the field.

The idea of supporting a theater cant be limited to an idea that I only support he work I like most, said Haj. It has been based on that organizations values, commitment, vision and mission as we serve our community.

Advertisers sometimes abandon hot-potato TV programs, as evidenced recently with Fox shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Bill OReilly. But its unusual for a corporate sponsor, let alone two, to bail on a performing arts institution over a show.

Haj recently directed Shakespeares King Lear in modern dress. That tragedy, about a mad ruler surrounded by fawning sycophants, did not make any overt nods to contemporary American politics although audiences reacted audiblyat linesthat spoke to the moment.

But Full Circle Theaters recent Twin Cities production of Suzan-Lori Parks 365 Days/365 Plays did feature an insecure character in a blond wig who spoke like Trump and wanted to be famous just to be famous. His mother yells at him to get off the stage, drawing approving laughter from the audience.

The job of art is to speak truth to power and stand up to authoritarianism, said director and theater scholar Stephanie Lein Walseth, who staged the Parks playlet, written 15 years ago. In this moment, things are happening on so many fronts, its overwhelming.Doing something through art to preserve our democracy thats what Im called to do.

Haj said that hes not sure if there will be a residual effect for this episode. But he hopes that artists will continue to be brave and courageous.

Arts funding is always, in one way or another, under assault," he said. Its the easiest political football in the world. When Donald Trump called for the defunding of the NEA and the NEH, thats not a budget decision. The funding is pennies per every American every year. But we dont get to line-item veto things we dont like or dont use. I dont get to say, 'I dont want to fund schools or roads we dont use.' We, as a nation, value art and culture. We value the protected space, the freedom of thought and expression.

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Obama-based Julius Caesar - startribune.com