Citizen Cartwright

‘Major, major conflict’ with North Korea is possible, Trump says

Nonetheless, Trump says he wants to peacefully resolve a crisis that has bedeviled multiple U.S. presidents.

"We'd love to solve things diplomatically but it's very difficult," he says in a Reuters interview.

Trump says North Korea is his biggest global challenge, and he praises China's President Xi for his assistance in reining in Kim Jong Un.

Meanwhile, North Korea has put out a new propaganda video showing simulated attacks on the United States.

Most South Koreans aren’t particularly worried about a renewed conflict, reports The New York Times.

Trump at 100 days: He thought the presidency would be easier

Saturday is the 100th day of the Trump presidency, which means, at least, that media — and the president himself — will move on from their focus on that milestone.

So what has the president learned during these days?

"I loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump says in a Reuters interview. "This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

As Trump is beginning to better understand the challenges and limits of the presidency, his aides are understanding better how to manage "perhaps the most improvisational and free-wheeling president in history,” says Politico.

“If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” says one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

Here is a Breitbart article titled "White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on first 100 days: President Trump 'going big league on trade.'"

And here is a roundup of experts’ views in an article titled “Trump's first 100 days: An ‘entry-level’ presidency,” from NPR.

Also in the news

NYTimes news analysis: Trump losing streak in courts is traceable to conservative judges

NYTimes: Trump’s tax plan would shift trillions from U.S. coffers to the richest

Senate confirms R. Alexander Acosta to be secretary of Labor

House GOP leaders, lacking the votes, postpone action on Obamacare repeal bill

Breitbart struggles to define its role in Trump era: Bad boy, watchdog, lapdog?

Robotics and other creative ways of combating invasive species

A robot that picks apples? Replacing farmworkers worries advocates

With Trump, the only thing for sure is nothing is for sure

Have I mentioned, dear reader, that one of the most unsettling things about the Trump presidency to me is that nobody knows what he’ll do next — and neither does he?

His instinct seems to be to lead with threats. And then he steps back. 

Example one: Trump called all 100 senators to a White House briefing by his war cabinet Wednesday on the mounting tensions with North Korea. The USS Michigan submarine loaded with Tomahawk missiles has surfaced in a port in South Korea. Gas stations in the North have shut down amid rumors that the government was stockpiling fuel.

"Americans could be forgiven for thinking that war is about to break out,” says The New York Times. "But it is not.”

The muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the dangers of a clash between the United States and North Korea, say senior Trump administration officials and experts who've followed the Korean issue for decades.

Recent American military moves are aimed less at preparing for a pre-emptive strike, officials say, than at discouraging North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from conducting further nuclear or ballistic missile tests. 

“We want to bring Kim Jong-un to his senses, not to his knees,” Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the Pentagon’s top commander in the Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

"None of this is to say there is no risk of miscalculation that could escalate into hostilities," says the Times.

Trump’s penchant for provocative statements has introduced an element of unpredictability to a relationship in which the uncertainty historically has been on the North Korean side, the paper says. 

Example two: In what the White House described as “pleasant and productive” Wednesday evening phone calls with President Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, Trump said he would quickly start the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Hours earlier, an administration official had said Trump was likely to sign an order that would begin the process of pulling the United States out of the pact.

Example three: Trump administration officials have told Democrats they'll continue paying Obamacare insurer subsidies, easing fears that a fight over the issue could lead to a government shutdown, The Hill reports.

Trump had threatened earlier this month to withhold the subsidies as a way to force Democrats to negotiate on a health care overhaul.

Get the new pledge in writing, advises at least one Democrat. But is that old-school thinking? Would this president feel constrained by words on a page?

Also in the news

Lawmakers push a 1-week stopgap funding bill to prevent shutdown as negotiations continue

Republicans take next step in deregulation with Senate bill

Freedom Caucus backs revised bill to repeal Obamacare

Trump to sign executive order to easily oust bad VA employees, protect whistleblowers

FCC chairman Ajit Pai pushes sweeping changes to net neutrality rules

Supreme Court justices alarmed by government’s hard-line stance in citizenship case

Obama balances his civic-minded side with lure of a $400,000 speech

United to offer passengers up to $10,000 to give up seats on overbooked flights

Trump to unveil ‘massive’ tax cuts, raising debt fears

The president’s proposal on Wednesday is expected to include cutting:

— the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent

— the small business rate from a top of 39.6 percent to 15 percent

— the top tax rate for individuals from 39.6 percent to the "mid-30s"

The plan includes a significant increase in the standard deduction people would be able to claim on their tax returns, potentially putting thousands of dollars each year into the pockets of tens of millions of Americans, according to The Washington Post.

As of late Tuesday, the plan jettisoned a House Republican proposal to impose a substantial tax on imports, known as a border adjustment tax, which would have raised billions of dollars to help offset the cost of the cuts, says The New York Times.

Republicans who slammed the growing national debt under President Obama said on Tuesday they're open to Trump's plan, even though it could add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade, The Associated Press reports.

Echoing the White House, congressional Republicans say the tax cuts would spur economic growth, reducing or even eliminating any drop in tax revenue. That’s a revival of economist Arthur Laffer’s 40-year-old theory, says a separate Times article.

The president's presentation Wednesday will be "pretty broad in the principles," says Marc Short, Trump's director of legislative affairs. The specifics are expected to start to appear this summer.

Trump’s decision to extend the corporate tax cut to real estate conglomerates like his own will give Democrats a line of attack, the Times says.

Why did Trump’s win surprise establishment media?

The national media work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008; and the bubble is growing more extreme, says Politico.

Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is geographic and political, Politico says. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county — odds are that you live in one of the most pro-Clinton counties.

In the past, newspaper jobs were spread throughout the country.

Daily and weekly newspaper publishers employed about 455,000 reporters, clerks, salespeople, designers and others in 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By January 2017, that workforce had dropped to 173,900.

Internet publishing and broadcasting jobs increased to 206,700 in January 2017. 

But 73 percent of all internet publishing jobs are concentrated in either the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or the West Coast crescent that runs from Seattle to San Diego and on to Phoenix, Politico says. The Chicago area, a traditional media center, has 5 percent of the jobs. Just 22 percent of internet publishing jobs are in the rest of the country.

Also in the news

U.S. moves THAAD anti-missile defense system to South Korean site, sparking protests

China launches its first domestically built aircraft carrier 

Judge blocks Trump's effort to withhold money from sanctuary cities

White House, House Republicans finalize new Obamacare repeal proposal

Leaders of House committee suggest former Trump aide Michael Flynn broke U.S. law

Randolph Alles, retired Marine general, named to lead Secret Service

In Berlin, Ivanka Trump hears groans as she calls her father 'a tremendous champion' of families

Capitol Hill reporters' committee declines to credential Breitbart

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales setting up ad-free Wikitribune site to tackle fake news

Report: Road rage cases involving guns more than double in 3 years

Google, other browsers now point out when the website you're on isn't using a secure connection

After 13 years orbiting Saturn, Cassini spacecraft’s mission to end with death dive between rings

FDA issues warning letters to 14 companies selling more than 65 fake cancer treatments

Researchers zero in on genetic links between early puberty and increased cancer risk

Trump’s ‘sudden urgency’ on North Korea's nukes

The president and his aides fear they’re running out of time, with a growing number of expert studies and classified intelligence reports concluding that the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks, The New York Times reports.

All 100 senators are to go to the White House for a briefing Wednesday on the North Korea situation by Secretary of State Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Coats and General Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Senate aides say.

While top administration officials routinely travel to Capitol Hill to talk to members of Congress on foreign policy and national security, it's unusual for the entire Senate to go to such an event at the White House, and for those four top officials to be involved.

Government shutdown over border wall less likely

Bipartisan negotiators are making progress toward a budget deal to prevent a partial federal shutdown this weekend, after President Trump signaled in a meeting with conservative journalists that he would put off his demand that the measure include money to build his Mexican border wall.