Defense

In March 2018, Trump named John Bolton as National Security Adviser.  It's been all downhill from there.

Fearing a "public relations nightmare," Trump's White House and the Environmental Protection Agency, under the reign of Scott Pruitt, blocked the release of a major water contamination story.  Journalists, members of Congress, environmental and public health advocates, and water experts are all calling on the Trump administration to "immediately" release the report.

John Bolton is the mentally imbalanced new national security adviser to Trump.  Stupid leading the stupid or blind leading the blind.  We detailed Bolton is great depth HERE.  Bolton is, of course, up to no good.

The Trump administration has eliminated the White House’s top cyber policy role, jettisoning a key position created during the Obama presidency to harmonize the government's overall approach to cybersecurity policy and digital warfare.

The civil war and destruction of Syria has been going on since 2011.  As of April 2018, nearly 6 million Syrians have fled the country.  The destruction is so widespread and society in such ruins that there's no reliable count of lives lost but estimates in 2016 were that 400,000 lives were lost, let alone how many thousands more during the past two years.

In mid-March Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director, was named by Trump as the replacement Secretary of State for the fired Rex Tillerson.  Besides hearing his name a few times, most people don't know anything about Pompeo.  That needs to change.

Trump’s new State Department pick is known for his hawkish foreign policy — and for defending Trump at every turn.

Last week, Trump fired three star General H.R. McMaster and appointed John Bolton and his new National Security Adviser, the third man to hold the role in the past 14 months.  The national security adviser job doesn’t require confirmation.

Why are those in-the-know so alarmed by this?  Let's briefly talk about Bolton.  

John Bolton, the incoming national security adviser, will have the ear of Trump at a perilously fraught moment in world affairs.

In August 2017, Trump tweeted about banning transgender troops from our military: http://smartdissent.com/article/transgender-military-ban-tweets-dont-equal-policy-changes

In September 2017, Trump issued an executive order on that ban: http://smartdissent.com/article/update-executive-order-transgender-military-ban-signed

It can be a struggle in daily conversations to explain the impacts this election has every day on the decisions being made to govern our society.  Trump's handlers are putting individuals in positions of real, tangible power who are spending every hour of every day implementing policies in an efficient, destructive manner.  They are doing the exact things their prior words, actions, and lobbyist bosses should have made obvious.

Soon after inauguration, Trump nominated Dr. David Shulkin as the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  He was confirmed by the Senate on February 13, 2017.  He has since traveled on "business trips" to London and Denmark on taxpayers dime while claiming he personally paid for many activities he did while abroad that had nothing to do with his post. He got back to work last week, seeking to put homeless veterans back on the street.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been accused by State Department diplomats of violating the Child Soldier Prevention Act (CSPA), a United States federal statute signed into law by President George W. Bush in October 2008.

CSPA states that the U.S. government must be satisfied that no children under the age of 18 “are recruited, conscripted or otherwise compelled to serve as child soldiers” for a country to be removed from the list.