Curious Kids: How come Donald Trump won if Hillary Clinton got more votes?

Hillary Clinton got the most individual votes from US citizens in 2016, but Donald Trump won the most electoral votes.

Source: Curious Kids: How come Donald Trump won if Hillary Clinton got more votes?

House passes resolution rebuking Trump over Syria pullout | TheHill

The House on Wednesday approved a resolution formally rebuking President Trump over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria.

The measure passed in a 354-60 vote, with four lawmakers voting present. All 60 votes against the resolution came from Republicans, with the present votes coming from three GOP lawmakers and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.). The top three House Republicans supported the motion in a rare split from the president.

The resolution — which was sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas) — “opposes the decision to end certain United States efforts to prevent Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria.”

The measure also calls on Turkey to end its military action, calls on the United States to protect the Kurds and calls on the White House “to present a clear and specific plan for the enduring defeat of ISIS.”

“The measure we’re considering today will send an unambiguous bipartisan, hopefully bicameral rejection of Trump’s policy in Syria,” Engel said ahead of the vote.

Trump has ordered all U.S. troops in northern Syria to pull back, paving the way for Turkey to launch an offensive against Kurdish forces that were instrumental in the U.S.-led fight against the ISIS.

The decision was swiftly condemned by lawmakers in both parties as abandoning the Kurds, signaling to future partners the United States is untrustworthy and enabling ISIS to resurge in the chaos.

The House’s resolution came to the floor under suspension of the rules, meaning it needed two-thirds approval to pass. The measure garnered support from all Democrats and 129 Republicans.

While the resolution breaks with Trump’s decision, Trump is named just once in the measure when it notes he spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Oct. 6.

 

Source: House passes resolution rebuking Trump over Syria pullout | TheHill

Dow Jones industrial average loses more than 600 points, or 2.4%, after Trump demands companies stop doing business with China – The Washington Post

President Donald Trump demanded U.S. companies stop doing business with China and questioned whether the Federal Reserve chairman was a bigger enemy of the U.S. than Beijing’s leader Friday, capping one of the most extraordinary days in the long-running U.S.-China trade war.

The president’s Twitter tirades, in response to China’s move to impose retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion in American goods, sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling 600 points, or nearly 2.4 percent, by the end of trading and provoked an immediate negative reaction from the business community.

The extraordinary events began unfolding when China announced it would levy new tariffs on $75 billion in goods, including reinstated levies on auto products.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · 5h

As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can “speak” without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work “brilliantly” with both, and the U.S. will do great…

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

….My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?

 

Trump: Jews who vote Democrat show ‘lack of knowledge or great disloyalty’ | TheHill

President Trump said Tuesday that Jewish people who vote for Democrats are either ignorant or disloyal as he railed against two congresswomen who have been critical of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

“I think Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with the president of Romania.

Trump and the GOP have sought to win over Jewish voters from the Democratic Party by criticizing statements by Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. Both have criticized Israel’s government.

Trump last week urged Israel to block Tlaib and Omar from visiting the country, saying in a tweet that allowing the visit would show “great weakness.” An hour after Trump’s tweet, Israel denied the congresswomen entry.

But in stating that Jewish people who voted for Democrats were disloyal, Trump appeared to step into the same verbal quagmire about Jewish loyalty to the Israeli state that had drawn criticism to Omar earlier this year.

Omar took heat for remarks that suggested to some that Jewish Americans were more loyal to Israel than the United States.

Trump’s comments came as he accused Tlaib and Omar of hating Israel and the Jewish people, and he complained that Democrats should also be criticizing them.

“The concept of even talking about this … of cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

“Where has the Democratic Party gone?” he continued. “Where have they gone … where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel?”

Jewish groups and Democratic lawmakers swiftly condemned the president’s Tuesday remarks.

“At a time when anti-Semitic incidents have increased — due to the president’s emboldening of white nationalism — Trump is repeating an anti-Semitic trope. If this is about Israel, then Trump is repeating a dual loyalty claim, which is a form of anti-Semitism. If this is about Jews being ‘loyal’ to him, then Trump needs a reality check,” said Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

It’s unclear who @POTUS is claiming Jews would be “disloyal” to, but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews. As we’ve said before, it’s possible to engage in the democratic process w/o these claims. It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football.

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) August 20, 2019

Disgusting. The President of the United States just said that over 75% of American Jews are either disloyal or unintelligent. https://t.co/l6qTtZOaIB

— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) August 20, 2019

 

Source: Trump: Jews who vote Democrat show ‘lack of knowledge or great disloyalty’ | TheHill

If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery : The Conversation

The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence committed by and against people long dead.

The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “a debt that is owed.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people.

Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with skepticism: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?

Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and paid them US$20,000 each to compensate for their suffering.

Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.

Compensating victims of Nazi enslavement

I am a professor of political science who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice. My recent work on Germany examines how the country dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.

Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers.

 

Source: If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery : The Conversation

Trump enables arms sales to Saudi dictatorship while saber-rattling against Iran | The Canary

The last few months have seen US aggression toward Iran creep dangerously close to war. Washington’s propaganda line is generally that Iran is the major aggressor in the Middle East. But amid this saber-rattling, Donald Trump has just given the latest in a long line of free passes to what is perhaps the region’s biggest villain.

Free pass to Saudi Arabia, yet again

On 24 July, Trump announced a veto over resolutions passed in the Senate to block weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He said:

This resolution would weaken America’s global competitiveness and damage the important relationships we share with our allies and partners

 

Source: Trump enables arms sales to Saudi dictatorship while saber-rattling against Iran | The Canary

G20: 19 members recommit to Paris climate agreement, without US | Euronews

All members of the G20 reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate deal on Saturday, excluding the United States.

The 19 signatories have agreed on the “irreversibility” of the treaty on climate, signed in Paris in 2015, and have committed to its “complete implementation”.

The commitment was achieved with difficulty as the members faced opposition from the only G20 member not to sig: the United States.

“We must do a lot more on climate,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “Scientists remind us of our duty every day. Young people remind us of our duty, too. We have signed the declaration with 19 members, except the US. We will continue to progress on the essential topic of climate.”

Macron added: “I did the maximum in 2017 to convince Trump to ratify the Paris agreement. I can only regret the American position.”

 

Source: G20: 19 members recommit to Paris climate agreement, without US | Euronews

Factbox: How free would a UK-U.S. trade agreement be? – Reuters

Brexit supporters have said rapidly agreed trade accords with the United States and other countries will make a prosperous “Global Britain” outside the European Union.

Both Britain and the United States would need to determine the scope of negotiations, but past experience of Washington’s dealings with other would-be trade partners shows what it is likely to seek and the limits on what it would offer.

BRITAIN’S NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (NHS)

The U.S. ambassador’s comment that Britain’s NHS should be “on the table” in a trade deal caused an uproar in Britain.

There are two areas of U.S. interest. First, it would want its companies be allowed to bid for NHS contracts, although tenders are generally open already.

The second area concerns the reference prices the NHS sets for its purchases of drugs.

The United States, which sought to challenge a similar scheme in Australia during trade negotiations, argues that lower set prices are unfair on its pharmaceutical companies and leave U.S. consumers footing the bill.

Britain could exempt its health service from trade talks, as France did for audiovisual services in the EU-U.S. TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) negotiations, although this could limit what Washington would want to offer.

Spending on the NHS totalled 144.3 billion pounds ($183.0 billion) in 2016/17, according to an April 2018 parliamentary briefing paper. OECD data shows that per capita expenditure on health in the UK was $4,246 in 2017 compared to an OECD average of $3,992 and $10,209 in the United States.

FARM PRODUCTS

Washington is a net exporter of farm products, notably of meat and animal feed, but normally also wants its counterpart to accept its farming standards.

 

Source: Factbox: How free would a UK-U.S. trade agreement be? – Reuters

#MeToo whistleblowing is upending A century-old legal precedent in US demanding loyalty to the boss : The Conversation

When was the last time you agreed to keep a secret?

Perhaps it was a personal confidence shared by a close family member or friend. Or it might have been in a contract with your employer to safeguard confidential information. Either way, you probably felt a strong sense of obligation to keep that secret.

At least when it comes to the workplace, that’s no accident. In the United States, the idea that workers owe their employers a duty of loyalty goes back more than 100 years. It is deeply ingrained in legal rules and American culture.

But it has been fraying, most recently in the form of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s damning congressional testimony against the president.

This trend was also on full display when the #MeToo movement went viral in 2017. #MeToo was, of course, about sexual harassment and assault. But it was also a form of mass whistleblowing. The movement signaled victims’ willingness – at an unprecedented scale – to defy promises of secrecy to their employers in service of a larger truth by revealing their experiences of workplace harassment.

While researching a book on the duty of loyalty, I realized that the #MeToo movement isn’t merely a rift in the ordinary order of workplace relationships in the United States. It is part a larger legal and cultural shift that has been in the works for decades.

Employee fealty

The duty of loyalty is the idea that you “cannot bite the hand that feeds you and insist on staying for future banquets,” as an American labor arbitrator wrote in 1972.

It’s a bedrock principle that courts apply to employment disputes, even if you didn’t sign a contract promising to keep an employer’s secrets.

The duty of loyalty is why employers can demand that you sign a confidentiality agreement at the start of employment. It’s why workers can’t download their employer’s trade secrets on a thumb drive and use it in their new job. And why companies are able to persuade judges to enforce noncompete agreements.

 

Source: #MeToo whistleblowing is upending A century-old legal precedent in US demanding loyalty to the boss : The Conversation

Michael Cohen’s testimony on Trump business reveals conduct that’s widespread in corporate America : The Conversation

The Trump Organization, Donald Trump’s private, family-run business, is well known to have operated at the fringes of what’s legal. Trump got his start in the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of New York City real estate development, after all.

And so, as someone who pays close attention to how businesses operate, I was glued to the Feb. 27 testimony of former Trump “fixer” and personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who also served as an executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

While I learned little that was new, the testimony was still troubling – but not for what it said about the Trump Organization.

Rather, what I found most noteworthy is how the conduct attributed to Trump the businessman, however extreme, actually reflects actions and attitudes that are widespread within corporate America generally.

Putting leaders on a pedestal

It is well known that Trump runs his enterprises – both business and governmental – on loyalty, rather than, say, competence or performance.

What Cohen highlighted was just how debilitating, even destructive, the lionization of individual leaders and expectation of loyalty can be, whether we’re talking about Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Cohen said he was “mesmerized” by Trump, calling him a “giant” and an “icon.” Being around Trump was “intoxicating,” he said, and “everyone’s job at the Trump organization was to protect Mr. Trump.”

Cohen’s testimony revealed just how blinding that commitment to a mesmerizing individual became, leading him to replace judgment with worship. Cohen admitted both to lying to Congress and to falsifying campaign finance reports in the name of standing by his boss.

Cohen’s description may seem startling. But to someone who has extensively studied leadership in business organizations, I recognize an unfortunate pattern that dominates corporate America.

Corporations all too often fall into the trap of romanticizing leaders, often to the detriment of performance. By placing their own role front and center, CEOs enhance their self-esteem and justify their power and prodigious financial rewards.

 

 

Source: Michael Cohen’s testimony on Trump business reveals conduct that’s widespread in corporate America : The Conversation