Hi, I’m Dylan with Riley here and these are the things President Trump has done in the past two weeks. He has greenlighted the Dakota Access Pipeline, started planning how to build the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and started to dismantle Obamacare. Michael Flynn’s resignation and the Trump campaign’s contact with Russian intelligence during the election have been in the news this week.
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Trump signed three executive orders to benefit oil pipelines and remove Obama’s environmental protections. The Dakota Access bill says that the pipeline is “90 percent complete,” and only needs to get the permits and government approval to “construct and operate the DAPL, including easements or rights-of-way to cross federal areas.”
Trump also signed an order demanding that the Secretary of Commerce make a plan ensuring all pipelines are make of U.S. iron and steel. There are “yuge” questions about what the orders will actually mean, since they make quick turnarounds necessary on approvals but they don’t know when they will be resuming construction.
He as also started to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Trump has just signed a order to “minimize the economic burden” of the ACA. He instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services and heads of other important departments to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from [and] delay” requirements of Obamacare. Because of the lack of preciseness in the order, experts were unable to pin down precisely how and when changes would start to take effect.
Recently Betsy DeVos has clinched the position of Secretary of Education. She has no experience in public education. She is under heavy fire from a lot of celebrities and citizens alike.
This Week
Michael Flynn (former National Security Advisor to President Trump) resigned because he was under fire for contacting Russian officials about sanctions put in place by President Obama during the election cycle. Flynn lied to the FBI and Vice President Pence about his communication with Russia.
Also, some controversial news came out on February 14, 2017. During the presidential election, the Trump campaign had contact with Russian intelligence. After phone records and “intercepted calls” tell us that members of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team had multiple conversations with “senior Russian intelligence officials” during the years before the presidential election. According to The New York Times, “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications.” This communication interception happened around the time the U.S. intelligence community was trying to gather evidence that Russia was purposefully trying to disrupt the 2016 election by hacking into the DNC (Democratic National Committee), three intelligence officials said.