Donald Trump smiled as he crashed a wedding at his exclusive New Jersey golf club last weekend, shortly after a gunman posted an anti-immigrant screed online and killed 22 people at a Walmart in Texas.
The president appeared to be in good spirits while waving to the cheering guests and clapping for the bride and groom. It was unclear whether he had yet been briefed on the massacre, which happened just hours before another gunman opened fire on a busy street in Dayton, Ohio.
Still, Mr Trump’s absence from Washington, paired with viral photos of the president celebrating in his club during a weekend of gun violence that left at least 31 dead, sparked a swift backlash from Americans as they called on their politicians to “do something” about gun violence.
But this weekend’s trip to Bedminster, New Jersey, at the start of an extended break, is nothing new: the president has regularly flown from the White House to his private resorts and exclusive golf clubs. He is now beginning a 10-day retreat, where he is expected to golf throughout. All the while he has been visiting his own resorts, Mr Trump has contributed to a major scandal: an enormous, ever-growing price tag for taxpayers due to his golfing habits.
The US Secret Service has now spent over $1m (£829,600) to protect the president during golf outings at his private clubs in Florida, Washington and New Jersey, according to American Bridge 21st Century, a research group that has tracked government spending at Trump properties and shared its findings with The Independent.
The figure amounts to $1,123,305, and includes everything from $529,265 that the agency spent on golf carts, to $579,440 for portable restrooms, mobile offices, scaffolding and ballistic glass.
It might be surprising that the 45th president has proved such a dedicated linksman since taking office. While Barack Obama was still in the White House, Mr Trump continually criticised him for playing golf, suggesting that he should be devoting his time to weighty matters of state instead.
In October 2014 he tweeted: “Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the US, President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter.”
The next day he followed up with: “We pay for Obama’s travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf.”
In 2016 he told an election rally: “I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again. I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again. I don’t ever think I’d see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”
Russia’s media regulator on Sunday asked Google to delete from its YouTube platform videos of anti-government protests and arrests which took place in Moscow a day earlier.
Roskomnadzor said it complained to Google about unspecified “structures” allegedly using tools, such as push notifications, to spread information about illegal mass protests, “including those aimed at disrupting elections.”
Under pressure
The Russian watchdog said that if Google failed to respond to its request, it would consider it “interference in its sovereign affairs” and “hostile influence [over] and obstruction of democratic elections in Russia.”
Moscow would then reserve the right to react “appropriately,” it said, without elaborating.
Local elections
Protests erupted after several opposition candidates were controversially rejected from a ballot for an upcoming Moscow council vote.
Tens of thousands of Russians protested in Moscow on Saturday in favor of free and fair elections and against police violence, in the fourth demonstration in as many weeks.
Police have detained over 1,300 protesters taking part in the protests.
Online surveillance
Russia has tough laws requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services, and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers hosted on Russian soil.
Moscow has a track record of putting regulatory pressure on Google, one of the main rivals of Russian internet search company Yandex.
The White House reportedly has been drafting an executive order, “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” that would ask the Federal Communications Commission to develop regulations around how tech platforms take down or suppress content. The draft is said to call on the Federal Trade Commission to apply these new rules in any investigations or lawsuits of these companies.
There is widespread belief in the US conservative community that these platforms exhibit an “anti-conservative bias.” While some prominent right-wing voices have been “de-platformed”—like Alex Jones of Infowars, who was banned from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—there is basically no evidence of systematic ideological bias. Claims like those in Donald Trump’s now-deleted tweets that say, for example, Google is promoting “negative stories on Donald Trump” and that this is “illegal” have no factual basis. (The platforms do, however, appear to be biased toward extremity.)
Even so, the Trump administration appears to believe this theory. Earlier this year, it launched a website that asked users to share self-reported cases of having been censored, saying that it was “fighting for free speech online.” At the White House’s “social media summit” last month, Trump proclaimed that he would pursue “all regulatory and legislative solutions.” The draft order seems to be a first stab.
According to CNN, the proposal “seeks to significantly narrow the protections afforded to companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” In particular, it aims at eroding the “broad legal immunity” these companies enjoy when they remove content.
Free-speech advocacy groups were quick to condemn the intent:
The details could well change, but discussion of the draft is a sign Trump is trying to bring more of his executive power to bear on tech companies.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that even as Trump cracks down on immigration through harsh measures, Trump Organization itself currently has undocumented immigrants working on its construction sites.
CNN’s “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper pointed out to Morgan that despite immigration agencies’ major increases in raids, including the ones in Mississippi last week that led to a record 680 arrests, there’ve been “zero raids” at Trump’s businesses.
“It seems like you guys are turning a blind eye to this crime being committed by the President’s own companies,” Tapper told Morgan, who recently served as the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency before he was tapped as acting CBP commissioner in July.
Morgan said he’s “never known anybody in law enforcement to turn a blind eye to someone that’s committing a crime.”
When Tapper commented that it seemed like there haven’t been any investigations into Trump’s companies, the acting CBP commissioner said that “you can’t really say that for sure” because “there are investigations going on all the time that you’re unaware of.”
“And we shouldn’t be aware of those investigations,” Morgan said. “So those investigations should be done without notifying everyone, because, of course, it is going to jeopardize the investigation if I come on here and I talk to you about an investigation that is going on.”
CRITICS CALL IT A job-killer. Proponents say it’s a long-overdue move to share near-record corporate profits with workers who haven’t seen a mandated wage increase in more than 10 years, a record stretch. And others say it’s warranted in higher-cost states, but makes no sense in states where the price of housing, groceries and transportation is lower.
Raising the minimum wage evokes a passionate response from all sides, and the argument is growing more heated now that the House of Representatives has voted to more than double the federal minimum age from $7.25 an hour to $15 hourly by 2024. State by state, the minimum wage varies dramatically – from the federally mandated cellar of $7.25 in a swath of Southern states, plus rural states such as Idaho and Utah, to $11.10 in New York and up to $12 an hour in California. As of this year, 21 states require businesses (with some exceptions, such as tipped jobs) to pay above the federal minimum.
Was it worth it for those states to raise the minimum wage? Data collected by U.S. News as well as detailed studies by economists indicates it was – or at least that hiking the minimum wage has not hurt the state economies.
The states with the three highest minimum wages – California, Massachusetts and Washington – also rank first, second and third, respectively, in U.S. News’ Best States rankings for the best business environment. Arizona, with the nation’s sixth-highest minimum wage, also makes the top 10 for business environment.
Washington, Oregon and Arizona rank first, third and fifth in U.S. News’ rankings for business growth, while having among the highest minimum wages in the country. California, New York, Massachusetts and Washington also make U.S. News top six for venture capital investment. Oregon, Arizona and Washington also make the top 10 for job growth.
Cost of living does appear to influence state minimum wage levels, according to a U.S. News analysis, with lower-cost states (such as Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma) generally keeping to the bare federal minimum, and higher-cost ones (such as California, New York and Alaska) hewing higher. But in cases where states offer a higher minimum wage than the cost of living would indicate (Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan), the state economies are not worse for wear. In addition to Arizona’s high rankings, Michigan ranked 16th in both overall growth and job growth, and second in the growth of its young population. Minnesota, meanwhile, ranks fourth in labor force participation among the states, according to U.S. News’ rankings.
A recent economic journal paper – considered the most comprehensive modern look at the impact of state and local minimum wage increases – analyzes 138 minimum wage increases over the past five years. The result? Pretty much what the proponents intended, says Arindrajit Dube, a professor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst and one of the study’s authors.
