Gsbt

  FILE PHOTO: People protest U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he plans to reinstate a ban on transgender individuals from serving in any capacity in the U.S. military, in Times Square, in New York City, New York, U.S., July 26, 2017. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks from Air Force One as he arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., August 23, 2017. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that directs the U.S. military not to accept transgender men and women as recruits and halts the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgeries for active personnel unless the process is already underway. The memo, released by the White House, laid out in more detail a ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. armed forces that Trump announced via Twitter last month, reversing a policy shift started under his predecessor, President Barack Obama. In it, Trump directed the Department of Defense and Department of H...

State Pardon Courtnay Hough protests in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. August 25, 2017, after former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio was pardoned by U.S. President Trump. REUTERS/CAITLIN O'HARA Alex Gomez of Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) joins local immigrants rights organizations to protest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. August 25, 2017, after former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio was pardoned by U.S. President Trump. REUTERS/CAITLIN O'HARA (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday granted a pardon to controversial former Arizona lawman and political ally Joe Arpaio less than a month after he was convicted of criminal contempt in a case involving racial profiling. "Throughout his time as sheriff, Arpaio continued his life's work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration," said a White House statement announcing Arpaio's pardon, the first of Trump's administration. Arpaio, 85, the self-proclaimed "toughest she...

Hours after another defeat at the hands of the Republican-held Senate, President Trump launched into a speech about immigrant gang violence on Friday and wound up delivering a de facto campaign rally with a spray of Long Island police officers applauding behind him. In his second brief appearance in his home state since taking office — this time in a small auditorium at the Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood — Mr. Trump described cities as “bloodstained killing fields” that were overrun with undocumented immigrants before his inauguration in January. He described the perpetrators of violent crimes as “animals” and said his administration seeks to “dismantle, decimate and eradicate” gangs. He also used his roughly 30-minute speech to bolster the police, urging them to be less “nice” in arresting immigrant criminal suspects or gang members whom he described as enraptured by slow torture of their victims. The gang...

 A U.S. congressional panel this week asked 22 government agencies to share documents on Moscow-based cyber firm Kaspersky Lab, saying its products could be used to carry out "nefarious activities against the United States," according to letters seen by Reuters. The requests made on Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology are the latest blow to the antivirus company, which has been countering accusations by U.S. officials that it may be vulnerable to Russian government influence. The committee asked the agencies for all documents and communications about Kaspersky Lab products dating back to Jan. 1, 2013, including any internal risk assessments. It also requested lists of any systems that use Kaspersky products and the names of any U.S. government contractors or subcontractors that do so. Kaspersky has repeatedly denied that it has ties to any government and said it would not help any government with cyber espionage. It...

Media captionRiley Dosh wanted to defend her country and the rights of those who disagree with her The White House has not yet decided how it will implement the president's ban on transgender people serving in the US military. Mr Trump's surprise Twitter announcement on Wednesday has been met with criticism from rights groups. Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration would work alongside the Pentagon to decide how to proceed. It is not yet clear how the announcement will affect current transgender service personnel. Why was the ban introduced? "The United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military," Donald Trump tweeted. "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." Asked at a press briefing if troops on battlefields would be immediat...

Amid all its upgrades and advances, the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is lacking one feature: urinals. Every bathroom on the Ford is, for the first time,  gender-neutral , equipped with flush toilets and stalls, according to Navy Times. Bathroom-design  experts have said  sit-down toilets are less sanitary and take up more space, and most of the Ford's crew members are men. (Women are only about 18% of the Navy.) But the Navy has said getting rid of urinals has advantages for current and future operations. Making every bathroom accessible to all of the ship's sailors will also make things more convenient for sailors, the Navy has said. And bathrooms that can be used by either gender mean the Navy can reassign them without making any design changes, should the crew's makeup change. "This is designed to give the ship flexibility because there aren’t any berthing areas that are dedicated to one sex or the other," Operations Spe...

US President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman (R) shake hands in the State Dining Room before lunch at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 14, 2017. (Photo by AFP) President Donald Trump has criticized Saudi Arabia for not paying its fair share in return for the US security umbrella. "Frankly, Saudi Arabia has not treated us fairly, because we are losing a tremendous amount of money in defending Saudi Arabia,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters news agency on Wednesday. Trump’s criticism of Saudi Arabia was a return to his 2016 election campaign rhetoric where he questioned the protective nature of US relations with the oil-rich kingdom. "We take care of Saudi Arabia. Nobody’s going to mess with Saudi Arabia because we’re watching them," Trump said during a rally in Wisconsin a year ago. “They’re not paying us a fair price. We’re losing our shirt.” The billionaire even suggested then that Washington sh...

REUTERS/Carlos BarriaU.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 27, 2017. President Donald Trump appeared to commend North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's ability to control his country. "Not many 27-year-old men could go in and take over a regime," Trump said in a  Reuters  interview published Thursday night. "Say what you want, but that's not easy - especially at that age." "I'm just telling you, and I'm not giving him credit or not giving him credit - I'm just saying that's a very hard thing to do." Trump has praised the North Korean dictator's unmerciful rule  in the past . During a campaign stop in Iowa in 2016, he was reported to have said, "You gotta give him credit." "How many young guys - he was, like, 26 or 25 when his father died - take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden ... he goes in, he takes over, ...

As Donald Trump’s first three weeks in office come to a close, critics are pointing out that his iconic slogan, “Make America Great Again” is starting to look more and more like an attempt to bring American society back to the 1950s. What most people haven’t realized yet is that his vision of turning back the clock also applies to America’s nuclear arsenal. Just this past week, CQ Roll Call  reported  that a blue-ribbon Pentagon panel urged the Trump administration to make the U.S. arsenal more capable of fighting a “‘limited’ atomic war.” According to the report, “The Defense Science Board … urges the president to consider altering existing and planned U.S. armaments to achieve a greater number of lower-yield weapons that could provide a ‘tailored nuclear option for limited use.’” The strategy behind limited nuclear use sounds deceptively simple. You need to escalate a conflict just  enough  to end it. As the theory goes, using low-yield nuclear weapons aga...

A Secret Service agent stands watch as President Barack Obama arrives aboard the Marine One helicopter at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York on Sept. 13, 2016.Carlos Barria/Reuters Protecting the president isn't easy or cheap, and according to estimates  from The Washington Post , President Donald Trump and his family are on track to supersede what it cost to protect former President Barack Obama and his family by hundreds of millions of dollars, the newspaper reported on Thursday night. Judicial Watch, a conservative group that tracked the cost of travel expenses for Obama, estimated that $97 million was spent during his eight years in office. However, based on the first four weeks of Trump's presidency, which included three trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump is well on his way to jump past that figure. The Post rounded up a handful of estimates of the costs of protecting the Trump family incurred by the US departments of Defense and Hom...

The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release February 16, 2017 East Room 12:55 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. I just wanted to begin by mentioning that the nominee for Secretary of the Department of Labor will be Mr. Alex Acosta. He has a law degree from Harvard Law School, was a great student. Former clerk for Justice Samuel Alito. And he has had a tremendous career. He's a member, and has been a member, of the National Labor Relations Board, and has been through Senate confirmation three times, confirmed -- did very, very well. And so Alex, I've wished him the best. We just spoke. And he's going to be -- I think he'll be a tremendous Secretary of Labor. And also, as you probably heard just a little while ago, Mick Mulvaney, former congressman, has just been approved -- weeks late, I have to say that. Weeks, weeks late. Office of Management and Budget. And he will be, I think, a fantastic addition. Paul Singer has just left. ...