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#i do think it's hard to have this conversation without acknowledging copyright law
aadmelioraa · 2 years
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when it comes to the defense of fanfiction, i dislike remarks along the lines of "the divine comedy is just fanfic!!" not because i look down on fanfic, but because i want to acknowledge the unique merits of fanfic, because i love fanfic and fanfic authors and transformative fandom. every story is in conversation with other stories, but every story is not fanfic. there is always going to be overlap of course, there are similarities between why people create and enjoy fanfic and why they create and enjoy other forms of literature, as well as similarities in content and style, but this type of flippant response is SO common now and has done way more harm than good. you don't need to justify your love of fanfic by erasing what's special about modern transformative fandom, the solution is not to broaden the category. instead, stop letting people use the term fanfic as a pejorative. it's their loss, not yours.
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harrisjv · 6 years
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Snapishop Review And Large Bonus
Snapishop Evaluation - Are you looking for even more understanding regarding Snapishop? Please go through my sincere review regarding it before picking, to assess the weaknesses and also strengths of it. Can it be worth your time and effort and money?
How to Legitimately Make Use Of Photos in Your Social Network Advertising (Part 2)
# 3: Choose the Right Certificate When Utilizing Supply Images
If you use supply photos, you typically have choices regarding what type of permit you have for using the picture. Generally speaking, the a lot more pricey the Snapishop permit, the a lot more you can do with the image. When you utilize a stock art service like iStock, make sure the license you choose permits exactly how you're utilizing the photo.
A stock art solution might allow you choose which kind of picture certificate you require. Just because you paid $11.99 for a supply art photo doesn't imply you can use it nevertheless you desire. Numerous licenses limit the buyer to individual usage just, on-line media just (versus print), or a particular number of usages.
If you're a designer or you utilize stock art to develop pictures for others, make sure you have the permit to do so. Often you might need to ensure your client buys the license directly from the business.
On the web site where you acquired the image, try to find certificate guidelines in the footer. Or you can always connect and also ask the company if your permit allows your desired use a picture.
# 4: Get Permission From the Picture Creator
Profits: If you're examining whether to utilize an image or video clip, ask! In today's on the internet globe, most individuals are most likely satisfied to provide you permission to utilize their Snapishop image, provided you give them credit rating.
Take Instagram, for instance. Did you understand that reposting is in fact in violation of Instagram Terms? Yet (and it's a large however), offered the platform and also just how it functions, 99% of customers are fine with (as well as like!) reposting that includes the excellent etiquette of connecting back to their profiles.
However, state someone is among the 1% who do not desire their web content reposted. If that individual locates people are doing it without their consent, they can file a report with Instagram or potentially demand copyright infringement.
Simply a word of caution: Some professional photographers as well as attorneys are on the search for people infringing copyright. However, with copyright violation, you can not assert you really did not know what you were doing, and also are likely on the hook for damages under the law. However, most are happy to resolve out of court with a wonderful payout. I've become aware of an image of a pickle costing someone more than $5,000.
When in doubt, ask. "Much better secure than sorry" is a wonderful motto when thinking of whether you're utilizing images and also videos legitimately.
# 5: Do Not Think Fair Use Relates To Your Use Another Person's Image
The term fair usage gets sprayed a great deal, but what does it mean? Well, it can be an exception to the special civil liberties a copyright proprietor has more than their work. The Fair Usage doctrine was developed to enable specific use photos as well as material as long as that use doesn't impede the author's legal rights.
Generally, reasonable use relates to comment, criticism, or apology; however, people have a lot of misunderstandings about when reasonable use does and doesn't use.
The Fair Use teaching allows for particular use of photos as well as Snapishop content as long as that use doesn't hinder the writer's rights.
You can't declare reasonable use by just offering acknowledgment to the author. Fair use and also acknowledgment aren't connected. Fair use has to do with just how someone is utilizing web content as well as it is among those wishy-washy gray areas where attorneys usually claim, "It depends." Courts make use of a four-factor test to establish whether fair use is in play:
The function as well as character of the usage (whether it's for commercial or nonprofit/education purposes). The more on the side of education and learning, the more likely it's fair usage.
The nature of the work.
The quantity of the work made use of contrasted to the entire job (meaning, was it a paragraph from a book or was it the whole publication?).
Result on the marketplace or value of the work.
An instance of fair usage would certainly be utilizing a photo of Marie Forleo or Gary Vaynerchuk in a webinar you're doing regarding internet marketing. Yet you can not always take an episode of Marie's TV/video show and post it on your web site, asserting education and reasonable use. The entire factor is to stabilize copyright protection with the general public's rate of interest. So ask on your own, what am I using the work for and am I making use of a lot of it?
Verdict
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gyrlversion · 5 years
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Inside The Fight For A Federal Law Against Revenge Porn
In June, Bella Thorne “took [her] power back.”
For the actor, that meant revealing to her almost seven million Twitter followers — and, by extension, the Internet at large — that someone had hacked her phone and stolen her private photos. “I feel gross, I feel watched, I feel someone has taken something from me that I only wanted one special person to see,” she wrote in a note that explained how her hacker had been threatening to post the photos against her will, and had also allegedly sent her private photos of other celebrities in the process. So, she beat him at his own game and posted the photos herself. “It’s my decision now u don’t get to take yet another thing from me,” she added.
The immediate response was overwhelmingly supportive of Thorne, although some people attempted to shame her for taking the photos to begin with. She drowned out the haters by posting screenshots of supportive conversations with Dove Cameron, Zendaya, and Serayah, among other famous friends, and continued to post about the harassment on her Instagram Stories. Not once did she apologize for taking the photos, and she had no reason to: It’s the person who steals the images who needs to answer to their actions.
For many young people, “nudes” and other private photos are a common form of self-expression — so much so that the practice has been immortalized in a storyline on Netflix’s Sex Education, and in a monologue delivered by Zendaya on HBO’s Euphoria. Thanks to the rise of digital cameras, smartphones, texting, email, and apps like Snapchat, taking and sharing private photos has become increasingly normalized. Eighty-eight percent of respondents to a 2015 survey said they had sexted at least once; 96 percent of those people viewed sexting as a normal way to express themselves in a given relationship. Whether it’s healthy or destructive depends on the people involved, and experts warn to only send private photos to someone you trust implicitly.
Because therein lies danger: you can’t control whether the other person shares those photos without your consent, or if someone else obtains them through a method like hacking, or adding photos to a database or messageboard, as was the case when it was discovered in 2017 that Marines and other service members were swapping revenge porn photos. One study posits that nearly 10 million Americans have had their photos shared without their consent, though it’s hard to gauge a solid number given the shame that still proliferates the experience. And if your photos are turned into revenge porn, the legal options you can take to fight back are limited and can feel overwhelming.
Today, 46 states and Washington, D.C. have laws banning revenge porn, which is the result of maliciously sharing private photos that aren’t your own, typically by a former sexual partner and without the consent of the person in the image. The scope of these laws varies significantly across state lines: Some states classify it as a misdemeanor, while others treat it as a felony, and jail time can range from 90 days to six years. The existing laws are being updated as technology advances, too; Virginia has banned revenge porn since 2014, and lawmakers recently expanded that law to include “deepfake” porn, or work that has been digitally altered to simulate nude or otherwise explicit images without the victim’s consent.
Of course, there are still a variety of reasons why someone would choose not to report an assault or other sex crime — up to and including the experience of subjecting yourself to the law enforcement process. And if a victim wanted to report a crime to the police, they’d have to navigate a complex web of jurisdictions — because the law would have been broken depending on where the attacker was when they posted the photos, not where the victim was at the time of discovery.
As Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer in New York City whose practice specializes in helping victims of sexual harassment and assault, tells MTV News, “Especially when the offender has posted [revenge porn photos] under the guise of anonymity, we’ll have local police say, ‘Well, we don’t know where he was when he posted them.’” While Internet anonymity can make it difficult to ascertain a perpetrator’s identity, researchers found that the majority of those who post revenge porn photos are men. In a 2016 Brookings report that studied 80 separate sextortion cases, every perpetrator was male. “There’s often a lot of back and forth from local precincts about which one has the actual jurisdiction to prosecute it,” she adds.
Public retaliation has also largely targeted the victims, and not the perpetrators, in a variety of ways that include the slut-shaming Thorne faced. (Crucially, people of all genders have reported being victims, though the APA noted in 2014 that male victims are more likely to report their violation to authorities than female victims.) “The majority of people suffer extreme emotional distress and it changes their relationships with family and friends,” Goldberg says. “They’re just constantly worried about the fact that anybody on the Internet can see their genitals, and it’s a horrible feeling.”
Some attackers also target victims at their work; Goldberg acknowledges that some of her clients have been fired as a backward result of their being violated. If someone is fired from their job because of a revenge-porn attack, she recommends they sue their former employer: “I feel it’s gender-based discrimination,” she explains. Her firm also regularly works with clients’ employers so that victims feel supported throughout and after the ordeal.
Goldberg opened her practice after an ex targeted her; in the process of seeking justice, she realized how difficult it is for victims to navigate the various legal systems at play. But while some lawyers or legal support groups offer pro bono help to victims, and Goldberg notes that legal action “can be really transformative and healing if you do it right,” she also stresses that victims shouldn’t feel pressured to take any action they don’t feel comfortable with.
“Bella Thorne took a courageous step forward, and I think it’s bold and respectable for her to have done that,” she explains. “I don’t think that victims should feel they need to do that if their privacy is being threatened. It’s the right decision for some people, but it’s not going to be for everybody.”
While a federal law could help support victims, there isn’t really one on the books. Clearer-cut federal laws counter blackmail and extortion, and copyright ownership for selfies can often serve as grounds to have a photo removed from a website, but the federal law most frequently invoked for digital revenge porn is section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The CDA was passed in 1996, years before the advent of social-media behemoths like Facebook and Twitter, and doesn’t do much to help victims of revenge porn — instead, this law protects the platforms, dictating that the social media sites aren’t at fault for any revenge porn posted on their platforms. So if you want to scrub a photo from the Internet forever, getting the apps to take action can often require a lawyer like Goldberg, and a lot of litigation.
In May, California Congresswoman Jackie Speier and New York Congressman John Katko introduced the SHIELD Act in the House of Representatives, which would make it illegal to “knowingly distribute private intimate visual depictions with reckless disregard for the individual’s lack of consent to the distribution;” California Senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris is planning on introducing companion legislation in the Senate. The bill is a continuation of the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, which Rep. Speier introduced in 2016 after she “became aware of unbelievably painful stories of women in particular who not only lost their privacy but had their daily lives impacted in terms of employment and relationships,” she tells MTV News; the session closed before the bill was voted on.
According to Speier, lawmakers have been “slow to regulate an area that has become rife with a great deal of violation,” though she doesn’t necessarily believe there is a correlation between a failure to act and the fact that revenge porn overwhelmingly affects women and other minority groups, like LGBTQ+ people. “I think it has more to do with the fact that we have a lot of Luddites in Congress,” she says. “But there’s growing recognition of the need for [legislation], and we need to take a step to act.”
Yet even the most comprehensive legislation is only one aspect of the fight against digital harassment. (The 2016 bill received pushback from the ACLU which claimed criminalizing such action regardless of intent could be a violation of free speech.) And Speier is heartened by the knowledge that many survivors, like Goldberg, view advocacy as “a way of paying it forward. Many of them have already been painfully impacted by the non-consensual distribution of their photos, and they don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” she adds. Actor Amber Heard joined Speier in introducing the SHIELD Act to Congress; she was violated in the same 2014 attack in which Lawrence was targeted.
“My stolen and manipulated photos are still online to this day, posted again and again with sexually explicit and humiliating and degrading headlines about my body, about myself,” Heard said in May, per the Washington Post. “I continue to be harassed, stalked, and humiliated by the theft of those images.”
In part because of those activists, as well as a number of cultural conversations — including the photos stolen from Jennifer Lawrence and hundreds of other Hollywood stars in 2014; a similar, more targeted attack made against Leslie Jones; and the fallout from the allegations against Harvey Weinstein that served as kindling for Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement to reach global consciousness — we’ve seen an overwhelming societal shift towards both normalizing sexting and transferring the culpability for a crime to where it belongs.
“I think with regard to non-consensual porn, there’s been a sweep across the nation of refusal to tolerate the crime, and I definitely think that translates into more understanding towards victims,” Goldberg tells MTV News. “There’s just so much more rhetoric about being the target of someone else’s control, and sexual privacy violation, and so much more empathy and conversation about it.”
The post Inside The Fight For A Federal Law Against Revenge Porn appeared first on Gyrlversion.
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youngkofigyamfi · 7 years
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SOUL MATE
Written By: Matthew Boakye Yiadom
  @youngKOFIgyamfi
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  Copyright © 2014 by youngKOFIgyamfi INC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.
Edited by Hannah Kumah Cover design by Matthew Boakye Yiadom [email protected] Art Director, Benjamin Sackey Logo Design by Benjamin Sackey [email protected] Interial Art and Layout by Alexander Osman Mensah Map Design by Mishael Brookman Dadzie and Emmanuel Owusu
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book was printed in Ghana.
                                                                                                                                                                                   DEDICATION
                                    To my future wife. You know yourself.
                                            ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank God Almighty for this wisdom and knowledge He has given me. I am grateful to Priscilla Aniwaa for being such a good friend. And to my Best friends, Theophilus Adu Gyamfi, Emmanuel Amponsah, Osei Akoto Agyemang Boateng, Atiamo Gilbert, Faith Nordjo and Mrs Juliet Aduamoah for your love and support in everything I do.
My profound gratitude to my brothers Achaw Brempong and Akwasi Agyemang for always having my back.
A debt of gratitude to everyone at youngKOFIgyamfi INC. especially Samuel Nii Adjetey-fio and Hannah Kumah for their belief in this project.
                                                   CHAPTER 1
There she came, looking very simple and fair. She was wearing a white tank top and a blue jeans with black leader sandals and she crossed the street heading to my direction. I was standing under a mango tree on a breezy and sunny Saturday afternoon where the roads in Kumasi were busy as usual with travelers on journey for funerals, some to weddings and others to church.
At North Suntreso where I lived, there was one busy street that linked to Bantama high street, and I could see drivers on the street honking infuriatingly for keeping long in traffic and the sound of passers-by murmuring as she walked in a sashay toward the mango tree. I knew that was her usual route to her house and I could meet her during that time so I did patiently waited for her. I also thought it wise not to make a faux pas to the passers-by so I calmed myself down when I realized she was drawing nearer.
It was the first time in 7 years that I had literally seen her face that close even though we were in the same neighbourhood. She had aged gracefully, looking so delectable and had a nice physiognomy although I could still recognise her cheekbone and tiny lips.
I could hardly say anything to her when she came close in about an inch to where I stood. Then I realized I had something in mind to tell her and this was the only time I could do that. I turned back when she went passed the mango tree and called her name, Roxy. She stopped and turned towards me. What excited me was that beautiful grin I saw on her face and I also gave her a wan and ashy smile. That moment, I began to shake inwardly and it reflected in my words: when I asked her how she was, my lips quivered. She replied she was fine and asked about my parents and me.
Then I gathered the courage to tell her the reason why I stopped her.
“I’ve waited for so long to tell you this because something has been holding me back for a long time. But I cannot go on like this forever, I have to let it out. I want to beg for your forgiveness. I am sorry for what I did to you seven years ago. I really regret it. I didn’t know what came over me that day. I hope that you will find a place in your heart to forgive me and perhaps we can become friends again.”
I was so relieved I had let this off my chest. It had haunted me for the past seven years. As I waited for her response she started to giggle like a little girl and said,
“I hold no grudges against you Kofi, I forgave you a long time ago. I also didn’t know how to say this to you so I’m glad you’ve done this.” Then she said something that I was waiting to hear, “let’s be friends again.”
She stretched her hand to shake mine and I gave her a hand in agreement. She smiled again and walked off to her house.
I will never forget that day. It was the happiest day in my life. I was so relieved and happy that she had forgiven me and that we were friends again. I ran to my friend, Akoto, who was sitting nearby watching us closely to know what was going on.
“Did she accept your apology? I saw her shaking you” he asked,
“Yes she did!” I replied with a big grin, gave him a hug and said
“Thank you for letting me do this.”
Later that day I couldn’t sleep. She was on my mind the whole night, and I pictured her smiles, her light skin, her soothing voice and that white top she wore. Then a sudden feeling burst out as I thought,
“I think I am falling for her. No that cannot be Kofi! You cannot fall for her just so quickly, at least wait for some months to be sure of yourself.”
But the thought of her lulled me to sleep. The next morning I woke up with the same thought and feeling, and I’d boff anytime I thought of her. I went to my window on the east of my room, which was where I could see the compound of Roxy’s house, to check out if she’s already awake. There she was, sweeping their varander, and dusting chairs.
“So what next Kofi?” I asked myself. I had no idea what to say to her the next time we meet. I didn’t know how this was going to continue and whether I was supposed to go to her house or she to mine, or whether we meet somewhere. I didn’t like outing either. I’m most of the time indoors with a quotidian way of ‘happying’ myself: eat, play FIFA, read my Shakespearean books and go to bed. I had few friends but they seldom visited me during vacation because most of them would travel to spend holidays with their uncles and aunties.  
A week past and we still hadn’t met. Then I decided to go to her house but that wasn’t going to be easy. It had been a while since I went there. I needed a cover story; something that could make me go there without anybody raising eyebrows. I had to use her younger sister as my cover. We have been good friends since my fight with Roxy and even though she had begged me to forget anything her sister had done to me and be friends with her, I couldn’t just let that be.
Afterall she was the reason why Roxy and I were at loggerheads but she had no idea. She was a kid then. Now she’s 14 and I enjoy her tomfoolery anytime I am with her. She’s a great person to be with; very jovial, headstrong, and smart. I liked the way we gelled together and I always had my way with our arguments.  
I quickly looked through my bookshelf for a nice story book. She liked to read a lot, maybe that’s why we were still very close. She didn’t like Shakespearean books because of his sphinx-like penmanship, and that was the paradox between us. His stories, to her, were difficult to understand especially with the use of Elizabethan language in his works.
But what did she expect anyway? She was only 14. I had to find a nice African drama for her. While browsing through the shelf my eyes caught Ama Attaa Aidoo’s Anowa. Great, she’d love this.
I picked it and put it in my bag together with my Macbeth and a chocolate that I had wrapped as a thanksgiving gift for Roxy. I told my parents that I was going to the Asamoah’s to have a read with Rhoda.
“It’s good to hear that. My friend said it’s been ages since you went to their house. You are always indoors which worries me. Time to go get some fresh air.”
So I reached their gate, pressed the door bell, and heard someone running to open the gate. There came Roxy in her beautiful blue stripes. She looked very beautiful in it. I had assumed she had just finished bathing because I could smell her fresh soap and perfume, and her hair was shining as well as her skin. She seemed elated to have seen me and smiled at me,
“Hi Kofi, how’re you doing?” I could not utter a word. All that came from my mouth were few delirious mutterings.
“I…Is Rhoda around? Oh I’m sorry, I am fine. What about you?”
“I am doing well…come on in” she replied.
As I stepped into the compound we heard her mother call from inside their living room.
“Who was at the gate Roxy?!” she inquired,
“Its Kofi, he’s come to visit Rhoda.” replied Roxy, then I quickly said to her in a soft voice, “Actually I came to visit you”. We chuckled and went to the living room. Mrs Asamoah was glad to see me in the house once again. She liked how her nieces and I were so close. We used to do virtually everything together.
She told me to make myself comfortable and feel at home and asked Roxy and Rhoda to prepare the table for lunch while I also busied myself playing with Mrs Asamoah’s baby boy in the couch. Rhoda was as well delighted to see me visit them and kept on talking to me about a story she had read in the past week; George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I told her that I had read the story before and was singing the song in the story to little Osei.
Soon the table was set and Mrs Asamoah invited me to the dining table and asked me to sit beside Roxy (she still believed that we were still at loggerheads). Mrs Asamoah said grace before we began to eat. Then she continued to ask me many questions about boys’ school and how I was faring academically.
“It must be very hard for you in your first year in school. I’d heard the seniors liked to bully” Roxy chipped into the conversation. I give her quick glance over my shoulder and replied that it wasn’t easy at all. At one time, I ran away from school and told my parents that I no longer wanted to be in the boarding house. I wanted to become a day student. They didn’t buy the idea, thought I was too soft and had to be hardened in order to face the complex world someday. I guess it helped me in a way, as Albert Einstein puts it, “Life is a stubbornly persistent elusion.”
When we had reclined from the dining table, I went with Rhoda and Roxy to their room. I opened my bag and gave the book, Anowa, to Rhoda and told her snippet of the story. She seemed to be liking it already. She thanked me and excused herself to the living room to read. Then it was left with only the two of us in their room. Mrs Asamoah came in to tell Rhoda that she was going with Osei to a friend’s funeral and won’t be back until evening.
Now I was sitting on a chair opposite beautiful Roxy who sat on her bed stirring at me.
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stormdoors78476 · 7 years
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Trump's First 100 Days: A President's Very Public Education
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health care is complicated. China can be a useful ally. NATO isn’t obsolete. Being president is hard.
Over the course of his 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has been startlingly candid about his public education in the ways of Washington and the world.
He’s been blocked by the courts and befuddled by a divided Republican Party that’s running Congress, and his first months on the job have left the long-time reality-TV and real estate tycoon struggling for major governing victories and searching for a new approach to many of his campaign promises.
His “America first” campaign rhetoric has bumped up against the challenges of conflict overseas. His ambitious declarations on health care and immigration have run into the limits of Congress and the courts.
A president who prides himself on his ideological flexibility has struggled to manage a novice political team, split between moderate and conservative advisers, and he’s found himself reaching out to the friends and business associates from the world he left behind.
On foreign policy, Trump has been persuaded by foreign leaders and has leaned heavily on a national security team with more governing experience than his political advisers. He’s looked for lessons in his biggest victory: putting a conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, on the Supreme Court.
“I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. And the human responsibility,” Trump said in an Associated Press interview, assessing the difficulty of the presidency.
“This is tougher than what he thought,” said Trump friend and business partner Phil Ruffin, who has visited the president twice since he took office Jan. 20. “In business, you make a decision and it happens. In government, it’s not like that.”
Just days into Trump’s presidency, the courts rejected his first travel ban. Since then, they’ve pushed back on his rewritten travel ban and his attempt to cut federal money for cities that harbor people who are in the United States illegally. But Trump’s roughest lesson has come from Congress, which has balked at his attempt to repeal the Obama-era health law his party campaigned against for years.
During the campaign, Trump said the Affordable Care Act would be gone on his first day in the White House. In the weeks after his inauguration, the realities set it.
By February, he told a group of governors that “it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” adding: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
For Trump, the health care battle was a rude introduction to the complicated internal politics in the Republican-run House, which includes hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus and moderates in the Tuesday Group. When the White House made concessions to conservatives, it pushed some moderates away, and vice versa.
Unable to cut a deal in late March, House Republicans pulled the health bill from consideration. Trump lashed out at Freedom Caucus leaders on Twitter and indicated he would seek retribution come campaign season.
Trump’s team tried to pick up the pieces but hasn’t gotten there yet. A renewed burst of momentum this past week, buoyed by hopes the House would vote before Saturday, Trump’s 100th day, petered out. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he would not be rushed by the president’s deadline.
The contrast between the scuttled first attempt on health care and the relative smooth sailing of Gorsuch was a learning experience. The takeaway: working behind the scenes with outside groups, which lined up solidly behind Gorsuch, and lawmakers can pay dividends.
“Outreach to partner organizations starting sooner is helpful and I think that you will see that,” said Marc Short, the White House legislative director. “Probably we were a little bit surprised when we engaged some of the conservative groups on health care that they felt they’d been left out of the conversation from the Hill.”
None of Trump’s top advisers had deep experience in legislating. Now they’ve begun to compensate with outreach. The White House has hosted 230 members of Congress, and there have been 10 bowling sessions in the Executive Mansion’s basement. But no amount of bowling can overcome the division in the Republican Party.
The president has seemed taken aback.
In the AP interview, Trump said there was “a pretty vast area” between the approach by the most conservative members of his party and those who are more moderate.
To bridge the divides, Trump’s advisers have worked to moderate between the factions as his team tries to revive the health bill. The White House is taking a similar approach on the president’s tax plan.
Restless in Washington, Trump is working at “breakneck speed,” chief of staff Reince Priebus told reporters. Sometimes so quickly that his own advisers can’t keep up.
The president’s declaration last week that his team would release a tax proposal before the 100 day mark startled some in the White House, who scrambled to put together the one-page outline that was released Wednesday.
The proposal lacks the details about making taxes simpler and more efficient in ways that don’t add to the federal government’s mounting debt. Those are core Republican principles that would require lawmakers to eliminate or reduce precious tax breaks enjoyed by millions of people.
Trump did meet his goal of starting work on the plan in his first 100 days, but another tough challenge awaits on Capitol Hill as he still contends with health care.
Trump’s frustration with a lack of progress has sometimes erupted in anger — and sometimes in the direction of his political advisers. He’s frequently blamed his team for being unable to quash negative stories. He was particularly incensed by the steady drip of revelations about his campaign’s possible ties to Russia.
After Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped aside from Russia investigations because of his own undisclosed contacts with a Russian ambassador, Trump unleashed on his top advisers in an Oval Office meeting. Sessions’ decision overshadowed Trump’s well-received first address to Congress days earlier; it was a speech the White House hoped would give the president a burst of momentum.
But ultimately it was Trump himself who created the biggest distraction. The morning after his Oval Office row with his staff, he tweeted a series of inflammatory accusations about his predecessor wiretapping Trump’s New York skyscraper.
One of the lowest moments of Trump’s young administration was the forced resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who misled the White House about his Russia ties. Flynn’s departure cleared the way for a well-received overhaul of the National Security Council.
Trump has relied heavily on Flynn’s replacement, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who has formed an alliance of experience with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The president has largely heeded their advice on major foreign policy decisions and given the Pentagon vast control over military operations around the world.
It’s been Trump’s evolution on foreign affairs that’s perhaps been clearest to track.
Confronted with photos of injured children, victims of a chemical attack in Syria, Trump quickly pivoted from what he billed as an “America first” policy during the campaign in favor of intervention.
After listening to European leaders make the case for NATO, he stopped saying it was obsolete.
And after pleas from business executives and warnings of economic turmoil from foreign leaders, Trump just this week abruptly abandoned plans to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Each shift has different forces behind it.
On Syria, Priebus said he said sees a “Trump Doctrine” coming into focus: a combination of putting America first but not sitting around while world injustices, such as the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons, go unanswered.
In some cases, Trump has acknowledged he was ill-informed during his campaign. As a candidate, he dismissed the NATO alliance without knowing much about it, he told AP last week. “Now I know a lot.”
He had pledged to label China a currency manipulator, part of his tough-on-China populist rhetoric. But after a particularly warm visit from President Xi Jinping, Trump acknowledged the downside to alienating a power that could be a useful partner in curbing North Korea’s nuclear program.
“The bigger picture, bigger than even currency manipulation, if he’s helping us with North Korea,” he said. “What am I going to do, say, ‘By the way, would you help us with North Korea? And also, you’re a currency manipulator.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
Trump has proved to be open to persuasion, particularly from world leaders and outside forces. When news spread Thursday that Trump was considering triggering the U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, the leaders of Mexico and Canada launched a diplomatic full-court press to persuade Trump to rethink the plan. It took only a matter of hours before the president relented.
__
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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realestate63141 · 7 years
Text
Trump's First 100 Days: A President's Very Public Education
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health care is complicated. China can be a useful ally. NATO isn’t obsolete. Being president is hard.
Over the course of his 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has been startlingly candid about his public education in the ways of Washington and the world.
He’s been blocked by the courts and befuddled by a divided Republican Party that’s running Congress, and his first months on the job have left the long-time reality-TV and real estate tycoon struggling for major governing victories and searching for a new approach to many of his campaign promises.
His “America first” campaign rhetoric has bumped up against the challenges of conflict overseas. His ambitious declarations on health care and immigration have run into the limits of Congress and the courts.
A president who prides himself on his ideological flexibility has struggled to manage a novice political team, split between moderate and conservative advisers, and he’s found himself reaching out to the friends and business associates from the world he left behind.
On foreign policy, Trump has been persuaded by foreign leaders and has leaned heavily on a national security team with more governing experience than his political advisers. He’s looked for lessons in his biggest victory: putting a conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, on the Supreme Court.
“I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. And the human responsibility,” Trump said in an Associated Press interview, assessing the difficulty of the presidency.
“This is tougher than what he thought,” said Trump friend and business partner Phil Ruffin, who has visited the president twice since he took office Jan. 20. “In business, you make a decision and it happens. In government, it’s not like that.”
Just days into Trump’s presidency, the courts rejected his first travel ban. Since then, they’ve pushed back on his rewritten travel ban and his attempt to cut federal money for cities that harbor people who are in the United States illegally. But Trump’s roughest lesson has come from Congress, which has balked at his attempt to repeal the Obama-era health law his party campaigned against for years.
During the campaign, Trump said the Affordable Care Act would be gone on his first day in the White House. In the weeks after his inauguration, the realities set it.
By February, he told a group of governors that “it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” adding: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
For Trump, the health care battle was a rude introduction to the complicated internal politics in the Republican-run House, which includes hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus and moderates in the Tuesday Group. When the White House made concessions to conservatives, it pushed some moderates away, and vice versa.
Unable to cut a deal in late March, House Republicans pulled the health bill from consideration. Trump lashed out at Freedom Caucus leaders on Twitter and indicated he would seek retribution come campaign season.
Trump’s team tried to pick up the pieces but hasn’t gotten there yet. A renewed burst of momentum this past week, buoyed by hopes the House would vote before Saturday, Trump’s 100th day, petered out. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he would not be rushed by the president’s deadline.
The contrast between the scuttled first attempt on health care and the relative smooth sailing of Gorsuch was a learning experience. The takeaway: working behind the scenes with outside groups, which lined up solidly behind Gorsuch, and lawmakers can pay dividends.
“Outreach to partner organizations starting sooner is helpful and I think that you will see that,” said Marc Short, the White House legislative director. “Probably we were a little bit surprised when we engaged some of the conservative groups on health care that they felt they’d been left out of the conversation from the Hill.”
None of Trump’s top advisers had deep experience in legislating. Now they’ve begun to compensate with outreach. The White House has hosted 230 members of Congress, and there have been 10 bowling sessions in the Executive Mansion’s basement. But no amount of bowling can overcome the division in the Republican Party.
The president has seemed taken aback.
In the AP interview, Trump said there was “a pretty vast area” between the approach by the most conservative members of his party and those who are more moderate.
To bridge the divides, Trump’s advisers have worked to moderate between the factions as his team tries to revive the health bill. The White House is taking a similar approach on the president’s tax plan.
Restless in Washington, Trump is working at “breakneck speed,” chief of staff Reince Priebus told reporters. Sometimes so quickly that his own advisers can’t keep up.
The president’s declaration last week that his team would release a tax proposal before the 100 day mark startled some in the White House, who scrambled to put together the one-page outline that was released Wednesday.
The proposal lacks the details about making taxes simpler and more efficient in ways that don’t add to the federal government’s mounting debt. Those are core Republican principles that would require lawmakers to eliminate or reduce precious tax breaks enjoyed by millions of people.
Trump did meet his goal of starting work on the plan in his first 100 days, but another tough challenge awaits on Capitol Hill as he still contends with health care.
Trump’s frustration with a lack of progress has sometimes erupted in anger — and sometimes in the direction of his political advisers. He’s frequently blamed his team for being unable to quash negative stories. He was particularly incensed by the steady drip of revelations about his campaign’s possible ties to Russia.
After Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped aside from Russia investigations because of his own undisclosed contacts with a Russian ambassador, Trump unleashed on his top advisers in an Oval Office meeting. Sessions’ decision overshadowed Trump’s well-received first address to Congress days earlier; it was a speech the White House hoped would give the president a burst of momentum.
But ultimately it was Trump himself who created the biggest distraction. The morning after his Oval Office row with his staff, he tweeted a series of inflammatory accusations about his predecessor wiretapping Trump’s New York skyscraper.
One of the lowest moments of Trump’s young administration was the forced resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who misled the White House about his Russia ties. Flynn’s departure cleared the way for a well-received overhaul of the National Security Council.
Trump has relied heavily on Flynn’s replacement, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who has formed an alliance of experience with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The president has largely heeded their advice on major foreign policy decisions and given the Pentagon vast control over military operations around the world.
It’s been Trump’s evolution on foreign affairs that’s perhaps been clearest to track.
Confronted with photos of injured children, victims of a chemical attack in Syria, Trump quickly pivoted from what he billed as an “America first” policy during the campaign in favor of intervention.
After listening to European leaders make the case for NATO, he stopped saying it was obsolete.
And after pleas from business executives and warnings of economic turmoil from foreign leaders, Trump just this week abruptly abandoned plans to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Each shift has different forces behind it.
On Syria, Priebus said he said sees a “Trump Doctrine” coming into focus: a combination of putting America first but not sitting around while world injustices, such as the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons, go unanswered.
In some cases, Trump has acknowledged he was ill-informed during his campaign. As a candidate, he dismissed the NATO alliance without knowing much about it, he told AP last week. “Now I know a lot.”
He had pledged to label China a currency manipulator, part of his tough-on-China populist rhetoric. But after a particularly warm visit from President Xi Jinping, Trump acknowledged the downside to alienating a power that could be a useful partner in curbing North Korea’s nuclear program.
“The bigger picture, bigger than even currency manipulation, if he’s helping us with North Korea,” he said. “What am I going to do, say, ‘By the way, would you help us with North Korea? And also, you’re a currency manipulator.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
Trump has proved to be open to persuasion, particularly from world leaders and outside forces. When news spread Thursday that Trump was considering triggering the U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, the leaders of Mexico and Canada launched a diplomatic full-court press to persuade Trump to rethink the plan. It took only a matter of hours before the president relented.
__
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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exfrenchdorsl4p0a1 · 7 years
Text
Trump's First 100 Days: A President's Very Public Education
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health care is complicated. China can be a useful ally. NATO isn’t obsolete. Being president is hard.
Over the course of his 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has been startlingly candid about his public education in the ways of Washington and the world.
He’s been blocked by the courts and befuddled by a divided Republican Party that’s running Congress, and his first months on the job have left the long-time reality-TV and real estate tycoon struggling for major governing victories and searching for a new approach to many of his campaign promises.
His “America first” campaign rhetoric has bumped up against the challenges of conflict overseas. His ambitious declarations on health care and immigration have run into the limits of Congress and the courts.
A president who prides himself on his ideological flexibility has struggled to manage a novice political team, split between moderate and conservative advisers, and he’s found himself reaching out to the friends and business associates from the world he left behind.
On foreign policy, Trump has been persuaded by foreign leaders and has leaned heavily on a national security team with more governing experience than his political advisers. He’s looked for lessons in his biggest victory: putting a conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, on the Supreme Court.
“I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. And the human responsibility,” Trump said in an Associated Press interview, assessing the difficulty of the presidency.
“This is tougher than what he thought,” said Trump friend and business partner Phil Ruffin, who has visited the president twice since he took office Jan. 20. “In business, you make a decision and it happens. In government, it’s not like that.”
Just days into Trump’s presidency, the courts rejected his first travel ban. Since then, they’ve pushed back on his rewritten travel ban and his attempt to cut federal money for cities that harbor people who are in the United States illegally. But Trump’s roughest lesson has come from Congress, which has balked at his attempt to repeal the Obama-era health law his party campaigned against for years.
During the campaign, Trump said the Affordable Care Act would be gone on his first day in the White House. In the weeks after his inauguration, the realities set it.
By February, he told a group of governors that “it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” adding: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
For Trump, the health care battle was a rude introduction to the complicated internal politics in the Republican-run House, which includes hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus and moderates in the Tuesday Group. When the White House made concessions to conservatives, it pushed some moderates away, and vice versa.
Unable to cut a deal in late March, House Republicans pulled the health bill from consideration. Trump lashed out at Freedom Caucus leaders on Twitter and indicated he would seek retribution come campaign season.
Trump’s team tried to pick up the pieces but hasn’t gotten there yet. A renewed burst of momentum this past week, buoyed by hopes the House would vote before Saturday, Trump’s 100th day, petered out. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he would not be rushed by the president’s deadline.
The contrast between the scuttled first attempt on health care and the relative smooth sailing of Gorsuch was a learning experience. The takeaway: working behind the scenes with outside groups, which lined up solidly behind Gorsuch, and lawmakers can pay dividends.
“Outreach to partner organizations starting sooner is helpful and I think that you will see that,” said Marc Short, the White House legislative director. “Probably we were a little bit surprised when we engaged some of the conservative groups on health care that they felt they’d been left out of the conversation from the Hill.”
None of Trump’s top advisers had deep experience in legislating. Now they’ve begun to compensate with outreach. The White House has hosted 230 members of Congress, and there have been 10 bowling sessions in the Executive Mansion’s basement. But no amount of bowling can overcome the division in the Republican Party.
The president has seemed taken aback.
In the AP interview, Trump said there was “a pretty vast area” between the approach by the most conservative members of his party and those who are more moderate.
To bridge the divides, Trump’s advisers have worked to moderate between the factions as his team tries to revive the health bill. The White House is taking a similar approach on the president’s tax plan.
Restless in Washington, Trump is working at “breakneck speed,” chief of staff Reince Priebus told reporters. Sometimes so quickly that his own advisers can’t keep up.
The president’s declaration last week that his team would release a tax proposal before the 100 day mark startled some in the White House, who scrambled to put together the one-page outline that was released Wednesday.
The proposal lacks the details about making taxes simpler and more efficient in ways that don’t add to the federal government’s mounting debt. Those are core Republican principles that would require lawmakers to eliminate or reduce precious tax breaks enjoyed by millions of people.
Trump did meet his goal of starting work on the plan in his first 100 days, but another tough challenge awaits on Capitol Hill as he still contends with health care.
Trump’s frustration with a lack of progress has sometimes erupted in anger — and sometimes in the direction of his political advisers. He’s frequently blamed his team for being unable to quash negative stories. He was particularly incensed by the steady drip of revelations about his campaign’s possible ties to Russia.
After Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped aside from Russia investigations because of his own undisclosed contacts with a Russian ambassador, Trump unleashed on his top advisers in an Oval Office meeting. Sessions’ decision overshadowed Trump’s well-received first address to Congress days earlier; it was a speech the White House hoped would give the president a burst of momentum.
But ultimately it was Trump himself who created the biggest distraction. The morning after his Oval Office row with his staff, he tweeted a series of inflammatory accusations about his predecessor wiretapping Trump’s New York skyscraper.
One of the lowest moments of Trump’s young administration was the forced resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who misled the White House about his Russia ties. Flynn’s departure cleared the way for a well-received overhaul of the National Security Council.
Trump has relied heavily on Flynn’s replacement, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who has formed an alliance of experience with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The president has largely heeded their advice on major foreign policy decisions and given the Pentagon vast control over military operations around the world.
It’s been Trump’s evolution on foreign affairs that’s perhaps been clearest to track.
Confronted with photos of injured children, victims of a chemical attack in Syria, Trump quickly pivoted from what he billed as an “America first” policy during the campaign in favor of intervention.
After listening to European leaders make the case for NATO, he stopped saying it was obsolete.
And after pleas from business executives and warnings of economic turmoil from foreign leaders, Trump just this week abruptly abandoned plans to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Each shift has different forces behind it.
On Syria, Priebus said he said sees a “Trump Doctrine” coming into focus: a combination of putting America first but not sitting around while world injustices, such as the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons, go unanswered.
In some cases, Trump has acknowledged he was ill-informed during his campaign. As a candidate, he dismissed the NATO alliance without knowing much about it, he told AP last week. “Now I know a lot.”
He had pledged to label China a currency manipulator, part of his tough-on-China populist rhetoric. But after a particularly warm visit from President Xi Jinping, Trump acknowledged the downside to alienating a power that could be a useful partner in curbing North Korea’s nuclear program.
“The bigger picture, bigger than even currency manipulation, if he’s helping us with North Korea,” he said. “What am I going to do, say, ‘By the way, would you help us with North Korea? And also, you’re a currency manipulator.’ It doesn’t work that way.”
Trump has proved to be open to persuasion, particularly from world leaders and outside forces. When news spread Thursday that Trump was considering triggering the U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, the leaders of Mexico and Canada launched a diplomatic full-court press to persuade Trump to rethink the plan. It took only a matter of hours before the president relented.
__
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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