5 Things Trump Did This Week While You Weren't Looking
1. U.S. to withdraw from UNESCO
snip
But this week, the State Department did announce that the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. agency charged with promoting educational, scientific and cultural collaboration, known as UNESCO, citing what it calls an anti-Israel bias. In 2011, UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member, forcing the Obama administration to cut all money for the agency under a little-known law prohibiting U.S. funding for any U.N. agency that accepts Palestine as a full member. (U.S. funds made up 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget.) The U.S. is now behind on about $550 million in payments, which the State Department said the Trump administration is unwilling to pay. The withdrawal won’t happen until the end of 2018, at which point the U.S. would become a nonmember observer state.
snip
2. Education Department issues new priorities for federal grants
snip
On Thursday, the Education Secretary Betsy DeVos began to use this power when the Department of Education proposed new rules around federal grant programs, including a focus on the expansion of school choice—a top priority of DeVos. Organizations that favor school choice, along with other Trump administration priorities like the promotion of STEM and computer science, would receive extra points in the application process for competitive grants, replacing priorities under DeVos’s predecessor, John King, that focused on socioeconomic diversity in schools.
snip
3. Trump withdraws sanctions on Sudan
snip
Yet, for all his rhetoric about Obama’s “bad deals” and foolish foreign policy, Trump also made a move this week that looks very Obama-esque: lifting decades-old sanctions on Sudan that were imposed over Khartoum’s support of terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda. The State Department had announced a new strategy towards Sudan in the final days of the Obama administration, concluding that Sudan had made progress on counterterrorism efforts and on human rights issues. In something of a surprise, Trump has not reversed the policy, drawing praise from across the foreign policy establishment.
snip
4. Energy Department releases rule to promote coal power plants
snip
Less-noticed but nearly as important was a rule proposed by the Energy Department intended to improve the resiliency of the electricity grid by paying power plants that keep 90 days’ worth of fuel on site—a threshold only met by coal and nuclear plants. The move could significantly reform America’s energy markets but at 19-pages, the rule itself is sparse on details. Nevertheless, environmentalists slammed the move as a backdoor way for the department to subsidize coal and nuclear; even some free-market conservatives have criticized the changes, saying they would distort energy markets.
snip
5. DOJ gives “last chance” to sanctuary cities
snip
This week, the DOJ sent notices to five so-called sanctuary jurisdictions—Cook County, Ill., Chicago, New York City, New Orleans and Philadelphia—that it said were required to comply with certain immigration rules as consequence of receiving a “Byrne JAG” grant, a DOJ grant program which provides money for state and local law enforcement. The DOJ didn't say that it would withhold grant money for the five jurisdictions if they don’t comply with the law. But the department has previously threatened to withhold “Byrne JAG” grants to cities that don’t meet certain conditions around immigration enforcement, although that policy is currently tied up in the courts. Given the sanctuary jurisdictions's past refusal to change their policies in response to such DOJ threats, it’s likely that another court battle is coming soon.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/13/trump-policy-sudan-energy-unesco-000551
= new reply since forum marked as read
