Tag: keystone pipeline

Goodbye To The (Unneeded) Keystone XL Pipeline

Little passion greeted President Joe Biden's decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Remarkably little.

Sure, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called the move an "insult." His Canadian province had sunk $1.1 billion into the project, designed to transport dirty oil from Alberta's tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

But the Keystone XL pipeline was an artifact from an earlier time. When it was proposed in 2008, the price of crude had jumped to over $120 a barrel, causing some to fret that the energy supply would fall short of demand.

Oil is now down to about $50 a barrel, thanks in large part to the shale-oil boom. Thus, American oil producers won't be losing much sleep over the loss of a venture that would have added to supply, possibly depressing their prices even more. By the way, energy economists say that producing petroleum from Canadian tar sands could not turn a profit until the global oil price passes $65 a barrel.

The earliest objections to the pipeline were mostly environmental. Ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans in Nebraska worried that pipeline leaks would foul groundwater, an especially precious commodity in their part of the world. Its demise also ended ugly eminent domain fights, as the Canadian pipeline builder, TC Energy, tried to force landowners to give it right of way across their farms.

"Thank you President Biden and all the thousands of voices who have stood strong these many years," Jeanne Crumly told the Omaha World-Herald. Her ranch was right in the pipeline's path.

Not only is tar sands oil a dirty fossil fuel; it is the dirtiest . A spill rapidly sinks to the bottom of waterways, making any cleanup harder than it would be with conventional crude.

Of course, 2008 was before climate change jumped to the top of our list of existential crises. Extracting and processing tar sands oil creates up to four times the carbon pollution emitted in other crude production.

But what about the arguments in the pipeline's favor? They are yesterday's talking points, though some politicians are still making them.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts issued a short statement criticizing the cancellation as follows: "Failure to construct the pipeline would mean more dependence on overseas energy sources as well as fewer jobs."

On energy independence, one of Ricketts' key points, the United States already has it. The U.S. has actually been a net exporter of refined petroleum products for 10 years. Starting two years ago, more crude oil was leaving for other countries than was coming in.

And employment? TC Energy said the pipeline would create 119,000 jobs. A State Department report came up with a somewhat smaller number. It said the project would require fewer than 2,000 construction jobs over two years. And once built, the pipeline would employ about 35.

Then-President Barack Obama nixed the project in 2015. Right after taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump revived it. Biden killed it moments after being sworn in.

In a short address, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shed half a tear over the pipeline's undoing and noted the many Canadian jobs tied to fossil fuel production. He then said he looks forward to working with Biden.

Our acceleration into a post-carbon world will not be stopped. In 2020 — even as the pandemic pushed down global car sales by a fifth — sales of electric cars rose 43 percent. Consider the optics of an electric Ford Mustang about to roll off the assembly line.

The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline had its day. Fortunately, it never advanced much beyond debate. It is dead — this time, we expect, for good.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Trump Drops Keystone Pipeline’s U.S. Steel Requirement

Trump Drops Keystone Pipeline’s U.S. Steel Requirement

IMAGE: Cranes are seen above piles of steel pipes to be exported at a port in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China, December 1, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily/File Photo

While We Are Distracted By Tweets, Trump Is Building A Corporate State

While We Are Distracted By Tweets, Trump Is Building A Corporate State

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

The destructive toll of Donald Trump’s presidency is beginning to emerge, foreshadowing what’s likely to come as the White House and congressional Republicans begin to reverse, repeal, and replace federal laws and regulations and downsize agencies.

While Trump’s red-state supporters may be cheering now, they’ll soon feel the consequences. Take the Muslim travel ban, if upheld. Thousands of the doctors across rural America are from the countries targeted by Trump, a new analysis by FiveThirtyEight reported. “It’s no secret that the U.S. faces a physician shortage in many parts of the country, especially when it comes to doctors in relatively low-paying specialties like primary care and psychiatry.”

Add to that whatever is done to undermine Obamacare and Medicaid, and one set of dominos is lining up and poised to fall. A possible doctor shortage in the regions that elected Trump is only the start. Since taking office, a mixture of Trump’s executive orders, new proposed legislation in Congress, and directives by just-installed agency heads—the first in a coming wave of appointees—is taking aim to destroy a swath of policies adopted to enhance public health, protect the environment, and help ordinary Americans by curbing corporate greed.

This destructive template doesn’t stop in Washington, either. If anything, it gives license to GOP-held state legislatures to step on and pre-empt progressive laws—such as minimum wage, LGBTQ rights, paid sick days, gun control, natural gas drilling, and immigration sanctuaries—passed in cities where Democrats rule and reside.

“If people had a sense of the number of threats to local decision making there are, either under consideration or that have already been passed by legislatures, their heads would spin,” Democrat Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, told PewTrust’s Stateline, in a new piece forecasting more conflict.

It Starts at the Top

Trump’s executive orders may be vague, overreaching, and even unconstitutional in some cases, promising more than the intricate legal gears of government can deliver. But they set an unmistakable tone and direction. To review, his first was to overturn Obamacare, followed by freezing new federal regulations and hiring of non-military employees; barring funds for international family planning; reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines; speeding up issuing of permits to thwart environmental impact review; building a Mexican border wall; expanding the federal deportation machine; deregulating Wall St. finance rules, and more.

Critics have been quick to pounce on the inconsistent and hypocritical statements made by Trump and his team. Last Friday, for example, when surrounded by top Wall Street bankers as he signed an order intended to gut the Dodd-Frank financial reform, Trump said, “We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses and they can’t borrow money.”

Two days later on Fox News Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence fed the network most watched by Trump’s base a different line. “The message that we are sending to Main Street is that we are going to pull back this mountain of red tape that is stifling access to capital and loans.”

Trump’s critics may sneer at Trump for bowing to Wall Street while Pence panders to Main Street, and pledge to carry on resisting. But such personal reactions ignore a growing privatization juggernaut. Beyond the nonstop coverage of the president’s latest dumb tweets, a deeper and darker narrative is unfolding at a policy level. In almost all areas of public responsibility, the fulcrum upon which government moves is swiftly being redirected. And it is almost impossible to keep up with small changes that will have big impacts.

For example, look at what the Federal Communications Commission just did after Trump elevated Ajit Pai, an ex-lawyer for Verizon who was in the panel’s minority of Republicans under Obama, as its new chairman. Under Pai, the FEC released a dozen directives further privatizing the internet in ways that prey on consumers.

“He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down, and he scrapped an effort to break open the cable box market,” the New York Timesreported. A Wall Street industry analyst said, “The speed of the ruling and the chairman’s tone are very encouraging to internet service providers. I think it’s a down payment on [cutting] net neutrality, with much more to follow.”

Pai didn’t need Senate confirmation, which is the case for the thousands of federal appointees each president makes. As Matt Wood, policy director for Free Press said, “The public wants an FCC that helps people. Instead, it got one that does favors for powerful corporations that its chairman used to work for.”

Congress Joins In

This same pattern is recurring across federal government. But it’s not just with presidential appointments and executive orders. The most solid legal footing for any policy is to be a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, with fine-print regulations adopted under an ensuing rulemaking process.

Most of the press attention is now focused on Trump’s nominees to lead federal agencies and their beliefs. All of Trump’s finalists to lead the Food and Drug Administration want to reverse decades of precedent for approving new drugs. One contender, Jim O’Neill, a former Health and Human Services Department officials who is an associate of Peter Thiel, Trump’s friend and a Silicon Valley billionaire, wants people to use new drugs “at their own risk.” While that kind of deregulation steps on scientific protocol, to say nothing of possibly leading to medical marketing that’s even more hyped than it is now, his views are part of a pro-privatization continuum that is sweeping Congress.

A parallel legislative effort now under way would “redefine science to make issuing health regulations almost impossible,” Stanton Glantz, a UC San Francisco professor who has long studied and criticized the way tobacco companies have flouted public health laws, wrote to his list-serv on Monday. Glantz is referring to a bill slated for a hearing Tuesday in the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology that would limit the research that can be used by the Environmental Protection Agency for drafting industry-curbing regulations.

As Sharon Lerner reported for Intercept.com, this science-curtailing approach was “based on a strategy cooked up by tobacco industry strategists more than two decades ago” by limiting EPA to using data “that can be replicated or made available for independent analysis.” The problem with that standard, she wrote, is “health research often contains confidential personal information that is illegal to share,” thus thwarting precise replication and laws protecting the public. Another part of the bill would allow “industry to keep much of its own inner workings and skewed research secret from the public, while delegitimizing studies done by researchers with no vested interest in their outcome.”

This trend of protecting industry profits while disregarding public impacts isn’t just found in that one bill. Late last week, the House and Senate both voted to “overturn a [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] rule designed to stop oil companies striking corrupt deals with foreign governments” by requiring U.S. firms to disclose their billions in payments to foreign governments “in return for rights to natural resources,” said GlobalWitness.org, an anti-corruption group.

“Global Witness notes with concern the complete fabrication of the facts by the Republican leadership in their presentation about the [to-be-discarded] Cardin-Lugar transparency provision,” the group said. “They have relied on the American Petroleum Institute’s ‘facts,’ which have been discredited over the past six years in multiple fora, while being totally unwilling to hear an alternative view.”

License to Pre-Empt

The emerging federal takeover by corporate privateers has a statewide corollary: Republican-controlled legislatures and governors pre-empting progressive local laws adopted in the Democratic strongholds and cities in their states. If anything, the developments in Washington will only empower the stateside Republicans.

Democrats in deep blue coastal states like California see themselves as a new line of defense against Trump’s excesses. Their ability to draw lines and say no will be tested in federal courts soon enough. The executive orders to take away federal funds from sanctuary cities that do not help immigration authorities to deport visa-less immigrants will be a key early test case.

But across much of the nation, a different political dynamic threatens Democrats. Most Democrats live in cities under Democratic mayors, even in red states. Many cities have adopted progressive local laws that Republicans in their capitals want to overrule by pre-empting them with new laws affecting the entire state. In 2017, the GOP controlled the entire Legislature and governor’s office in 24 states. In contrast, Democrats controlled 78 percent of the nation’s 40 largest cities.

Republicans, increasingly, have sought to block actions by cities on a range of economic, environmental, human rights, and workplace issues, Pew’s Stateline just wrote. “The stage looks set for more confrontation between cities and states this year,” they predicted. “Already state lawmakers in Texas and Arkansas are weighing bills that would ban cities from declaring themselves ‘sanctuaries…’ Lawmakers in Kentucky, Virginia and six other states are considering preventing localities from allowing transgender people to use some restrooms.”

The progressive policies targeted by red states for pre-emption include: new gun controls, anti-fracking ordinances; creation of local utility districts, plastic bag fees, and much more. “About 32 states now prohibit localities from regulating ride-hailing companies such as Uber, 23 [states] ban the local minimum wage, 15 [states] ban cities from requiring companies to offer sick days, and three ban [LGBTQ] anti-discrimination ordinance,” Stateline reported.

Surveying the entire spectrum of Trump’s executive orders, his federal agency appointees, the flurry of congressional pro-privatization legislation, and state-side attacks on Democrat-run cities, reveals the true extent of the coming assault on basic government and progressive values that puts people before profits. With Congress and federal agencies swiftly being occupied by corporate privateers, progressives are going to be looking to local lines of defense for the kinds of public services and safety nets they want. But those too are under attack.

“This is really about cities asserting the rights of cities to decide for themselves, consistent with their own community’s values, what solutions are in the best interest of their community,” Tallahassee’s Gillum told Stateline.

In Trump’s America, with the help of a heavy-handed Republican Congress and Republican legislators ready to pre-empt progressive policies, Gillum’s premise will be put to the test. The only thing certain is that more confrontation is coming.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s democracy and voting rights.

IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump is welcomed as he speaks to commanders and coalition representatives during a visit to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, U.S., February 6, 2017.  REUTERS/Carlos Barria

9 Terrible Things Trump Has Done In His First Week As President

9 Terrible Things Trump Has Done In His First Week As President

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

It’s been just seven days since Donald Trump took office. While the media spent most of that time spilling digital ink over inauguration numbers, the new administration was diminishing women’s health and safety around the world, chipping away at health care for millions of Americans, and pouring money that could feed and insure children into a useless garbage heap along the border. It was a bad week for politics and decency, which have always been on frigid terms, but are now dead to each other.

There were other things, too. Trump threatened Chicago with martial law on what he thought was a double-dog dare from fellow racist Bill O’Reilly. He promised to install monitors—glorified tattletales, really—to oversee federal agencies and report back to brass at the White House. After again trotting out the lie about immigrants and dead people voting, Trump promised an investigation into the widely debunked issue of election fraud (though not into Russian election meddling), which should start with his own family and staff. Speaking of Steve Bannon, the grand wizard of the so-called alt-right and White House senior adviser continued the Trump team’s cynical campaign to keep their base paranoid, uninformed, and stupid by pretending their boss is a victim of the press. Newsweek discovered Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, and Jared Kushner all have email accounts on a private system. And as the final, delusional cherry on the poisonous cake, Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.

He also signed a bunch of executive orders. Far more important than all the background noise is the authoritarian craziness that Trump is codifying into law. These plans and policies will wreak irreparable havoc and damage, causing suffering and pain to millions in the U.S. and beyond. Remember—this is just seven days’ worth of destruction. We’ve got four more years of this.

Here’s 9 terrible things Trump did in just seven days.

1. Greenlit the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines.

On Tuesday, Trump signed three executive orders to benefit oil pipelines and remove Obama environmental protections. The Dakota Access memorandum notes the pipeline is “90 percent complete,” and seeks to expedite approvals for permits to “construct and operate the DAPL, including easements or rights-of-way to cross Federal areas.” The Keystone order invites “TransCanada Keystone Pipeline to promptly re-submit its application to the Department of State” for fast-tracked approval within 60 days. Trump also signed an order demanding that the Secretary of Commerce devise a plan ensuring all pipelines are constructed using U.S. iron and steel. There are outstanding questions about what the orders will actually mean, since they mandate quick turnarounds on approvals but include no actual directives about resuming construction.

It’s worth pointing out here that Trump, who has refused to divest of his many business conflicts, has been an investor in one pipeline and may still have holdings in the other. As Huffington Post writer Michael McLaughlin notes:

In May 2015, according to campaign disclosure reports, Trump owned between $500,000 and $1 million worth of shares of Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s lead developer, but had less than $50,000 invested when he sold off the remainder of his shares this summer, according to The Washington Post. As of last May, Trump had at least $100,000 invested in Phillips 66, which owns a quarter of the oil line.

Kelcy Warren, head of DAPL builder Energy Transfer Partners, donated more than $100,000 to various Trump supporting entities over the course of the presidential campaign. Though Trump reportedly sold off his ETP holdings last year, other investors were surely heartened by the executive action. Fortune reports that one day after the memorandum was signed, shares of the company were moving precipitously upward.

2. Reinstated the anti-abortion global ‘gag rule,’ which will increase the number of unsafe abortions around the world.

The Helms Amendment has outlawed the use of U.S. foreign aid dollars to fund abortion services to women since the early 1970s. That is not enough to appease the rabid anti-reproductive justice movement in this country, which won’t be satisfied until it threatens the health of every woman around the world. Hence Trump’s signing of an order that brings back Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Mexico City Policy—last in effect during the Bush 43 era—which bans U.S. support to foreign organizations that offer abortion or abortion counseling to women. Essentially, the U.S. will now tell foreign organizations it helps support in even the smallest of ways how to spend their own money. As Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards explains:

This means that if a clinic receives even $1 of U.S. foreign assistance for family planning, its doctors and nurses are limited in what they can do to help their patients. They can’t counsel a woman on the full range of health options legally available to her, refer her to another provider for specialized care, or even give her a pamphlet with medically accurate information. That’s why we call it the global gag rule, because it prevents doctors from talking to their patients and providing services that are legal in their own countries—and in the U.S.—and it keeps people from participating in the democratic process of their own countries. This means clinics closing their doors, more unintended pregnancies, and more unsafe abortion.

It also means that potentially billions of dollars will be withheld with organizations doing lifesaving medical research and other work beyond U.S. borders. Vox notes that the Trump order expands on the amount of affected funding by 15 times:

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on health issues, the policy will now apply to aid money coming not just from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as before, but also from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and even to Peace Corps volunteers working on family planning in the field.

3. Scrapped a money-saving fee cut for new homeowners.

The very first post-inaugural move Trump made was signing an executive order voiding President Obama’s mortgage cost reduction. The .25 percent cut to federal mortgage insurance, set to take effect today, would have saved new homeowners roughly $500 a year. The rate drop would have benefited first-time and lower-income home buyers with Federal Housing Authority-backed mortgage loans. For a self-proclaimed warrior for the middle class, it’s a seemingly contradictory first action to take, unless said warrior is also a pathological liar, in which case it makes total sense.

4. Froze federal hires.

On Monday, Trump ordered a hiring freeze on most government workers. The memorandum states that “no vacant positions existing at noon on January 22, 2017, may be filled and no new positions may be created,” with exceptions for military, public safety, and national security personnel. The order cuts off positions for thousands of highly skilled scientists, engineers, and nurses—who are not exempt under the “public safety” clause—many of whom are actually indispensable to the stated goals of the Trump administration. The order also places a burden on job-seeking veterans, who represent 30 percent of federal workers and are given preferential treatment in government hiring, according to Military.com. Vets who were already in process toward being hired for a federal position will no longer be up for those roles. The site also notes, “the hiring freeze would apply to the VA, which had been seeking to bring on 2,000 new employees to help clear up appointment backlogs and improve care.” More than half a million veterans already endure month-long waits for attention at the agency.

“President Trump’s action will disrupt government programs and services that benefit everyone, and actually increase taxpayer costs by forcing agencies to hire more expensive contractors to do work that civilian government employees are already doing for far less,” David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Washington Post. “This hiring freeze will mean longer lines at Social Security offices, fewer workplace safety inspections, less oversight of environmental polluters, and greater risk to our nation’s food supply and clean water systems.”

5. Began plans to build the big, stupid wall and other nods to his base of anti-immigrant hysterics.

Citing “alternative facts” not worth repeating about Mexican immigration, Trump’s “Border Security” executive order states that Congress will allot federal funds—that’s “taxpayer dollars” in plainspeak—for the “immediate construction” of a southern border wall. It includes plans to increase the number of border patrol agents by 5,000 and construct more detention facilities, and outlines a broad crackdown on immigrants who cross the southern border.

Paul Ryan, who is apparently confused about what the term “fiscal conservative” means, says Congress will pony up the $10-$15 billion it does not have for children and veterans’ health care or welfare to build Trump’s completely useless monstrosity. The entire Republican Party is still peddling the lie that Mexico will pay as soon as it receives the invoice for the wall order, though Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto again dismissed that insane, illogical idea on Wednesday. On Thursday, Nieto canceled a meeting with Trump.

6. Targeted sanctuary cities.

In a separate order, Trump takes aim at sanctuary cities, banning federal funds to jurisdictions that “willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States.” As activist and policy analyst Samuel Sinyangwe notes on Twitter, the State Homeland Security Program, Urban Area Security Initiative, and Department of Homeland Security collectively provide $275 million to New York City each year in federal anti-terrorism funds that would be cut under Trump’s new action.

For an added touch of useless pettiness, Trump’s order includes an attempt at public shaming in Section 8b, which states the administration will “make public a comprehensive [weekly] list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens.” The next time you wonder how government is wasting time and money, remember that your tax dollars (but not Trump’s, because he reportedly doesn’t pay taxes) are funding junk like this.

7. Started dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

In an order purporting to “minimize the economic burden” of the ACA, Trump instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services and heads of other departments to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from [and] delay” requirements of the Obamacare law. 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. There’s also the fact that Republicans, despite dozens of attempts to repeal the plan and years of time to brainstorm, have offered neither a replacement plan nor concrete strategy for its implementation.

“The order could affect virtually anything in the law, provided it is couched as a delay in implementing the law,” Stuart Butler, of the Brookings Institution, told Reuters.

Robert Laszewski, head of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, has spoken and written about the problems with Obamacare over the years. Despite recognizing the plan’s imperfections, Laszewski believes Trump and the GOP’s actions on health care will harm millions of ACA subscribers.

“Instead of sending a signal that there’s going to be an orderly transition, they’ve sent a signal that it’s going to be a disorderly transition,” Laszewski told the Washington Post. “How does the Trump administration think this is not going to make the situation worse?”

8. Demanded half-assed environmental reviews so development can proceed, consequences be damned.

“Too often, infrastructure projects in the United States have been routinely and excessively delayed by agency processes and procedures,” the executive order expediting environmental reviews and approvals reads. “These delays have increased project costs and blocked the American people from the full benefits of increased infrastructure investments, which are important to allowing Americans to compete and win on the world economic stage.”

To keep pesky things like clean air and water quality concerns from getting in the way of quick and dirty major infrastructure developments, Trump’s executive order will “streamline and expedite…environmental reviews and approvals for all infrastructure projects.”

The order directs the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality to make a decision within 30 days on “high priority” projects such as “port facilities, airports, pipelines, bridges, and highways.” All things that are utterly useless if we all sicken and die from drinking polluted water or breathing toxic air.

Once again, predicting how this will all shake out is difficult. “It remained unclear how Trump’s order would expedite those environmental reviews,” Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin write at the Washington Post. “Many are statutory and the legislation that created them cannot be swept aside by an executive order.”

9. Put gag orders on multiple government agencies and removed vital internet content.

Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Interior Department, National Institutes of Health, Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services (which includes the CDC and Food and Drug Administration), and other agencies were reportedly told not to speak to the press or provide information to the public for an indefinite period. New projects were also halted at a number of agencies.

The EPA was instructed by the Trump administration to take down its website page on climate change, according to a Reuters report. There were reports that the Trump team would be reviewing previous EPA studies and numbers, and also embargoing new studies pending review. Those steps follow the Trump transition team’s request that the Energy Department fork over the names of staff who worked on climate change issues. The team also asked the State Department for a list of positions and programs aimed at achieving gender equality.

That effectively muzzles agencies concerned with science, health, the environment, medicine and food. Essentially, everything critical to human survival.

Perhaps bowing to public outcry, USDA officials reportedly rescinded the gag order on Tuesday. There were reports of agencies going rogue, like these supposed unauthorized Twitter accounts of federal science workers, or the now offline but cached at the @WhiteHouseLeaks account. There was also the Badlands National Park Twitter, which for a few hours rebelliously tweeted climate change facts.

In the minutes after Trump’s inauguration, pages dedicated to civil rights, climate change, LGBT rights, and health care disappeared from the White House website. Spanish language pages were also removed, while a page titled “Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community” was newly added. “The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration,” the page reads. “The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong.”

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump (L-R) is applauded by Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) as he arrives to speak at a congressional Republican retreat in Philadelphia, U.S. January 26, 2017.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo